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Etymology data from Wiktionary via Wiktextract (CC BY-SA 4.0). Chinese character data from the 說文解字, the Taiwan MOE 國語辭典簡編本 (CC BY-ND 3.0 TW) and HSK/TOCFL lists.

Explanations are written by a local model (gemma4) and only published after a verification pass against the cited sources. How it works.

Chinese

變

biàn
to change (by itself); to transform
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 3
  • radical 言
  • 23 strokes

Etymology graph

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  • borrowed
  • derived
  • parts
  • meaning component
  • sound component
  • related
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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *prons): phonetic 䜌 (OC *b·roːn, *b·ron, *b·rons) + semantic 攴.

Likely related to 亂 (OC *roːns, “disorder”) (Baxter, 1992). Perhaps related to Tibetan སྤྲུལ་བ (sprul ba, “to transform”) (Shi, 2000) and Burmese ပြောင်း (praung:, “to change”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • soundChinese䜌 “chaotic”
    • ideaChinese絲 “silk (fibre, cloth, fabrics, etc.)”
      • ideaChinese糸 “thin silk”
    • ideaChinese言 “to say; to speak; to talk”
  • meaningChinese攴 “to hit lightly; to tap”

Related: Tibetan སྤྲུལ་བ, Burmese ပြောင်း

Meanings

character
  1. to change (by itself); to transform
  2. to become; to turn into; to change into
  3. to change (something in some way); to alter; to transform
  4. sudden major change; unexpected change of events
  5. to sell off (one's property)
  6. to be flexible (when dealing with matters); to accommodate to circumstances

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

變：更也。从攴䜌聲。

Xu Shen, c. 100 CE — the first analytical dictionary of Chinese characters.

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 更改、與原來有所不同。 例：改變、變化、一成不變
  2. 變動的、變異的。 例：變數、變態
  3. 突發的事件。 例：事變、兵變、變故

© Ministry of Education, Taiwan — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW, shown unaltered.

How 變 was written 字形演變

  1. 變 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 變 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  3. 變 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  4. 變 in Regular script
    Regular
    楷書
    since c. 200 CE

Historical forms collected by the legacy etymfun dataset; most characters have several attested variants.

Sources

  • Historical glyph forms (zdic.net 字形演变) — Rights unverified
  • HSK / TOCFL word lists — Facts (levels)
  • 教育部《國語辭典簡編本》 (Taiwan MOE) — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW
  • 說文解字 Shuowen Jiezi (Xu Shen, c. 100 CE) — Public domain
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 變