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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

費

fèi
to cost; to spend; to expend
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 3
  • TOCFL 6
  • radical 貝
  • 12 strokes
  • 廢
  • 废

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *prɯds, *pʰɯds, *bɯds): phonetic 弗 (OC *pɯd) + semantic 貝 (“cowry”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • soundChinese弗 “not correctly; not exactly; not quite”
  • meaningChinese貝 “shellfish; cowrie”

Meanings

character
  1. to cost; to spend; to expend
  2. to consume; to use; to exhaust
  3. to lavish; to squander; to waste; to lose
  4. fee; bill; charge; dues; toll
  5. loquacious; garrulous; verbose; (of words) superfluous
  6. naughty; mischievous

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

費：𢿱財用也。从貝弗聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 花用錢財。 例：費錢、浪費
  2. 消耗。 例：費力、費心、費時
  3. 花用的錢財。 例：電費、水費、瓦斯費
  4. 財用、款項。 例：經費、公費
  5. 姓。

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

How 費 was written 字形演變

  1. 費 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 費 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  3. 費 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  4. 費 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  5. 費 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: 費