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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

賣

mài
to sell
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 3
  • radical 貝
  • 15 strokes

Etymology graph

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  • derived
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Origin

Originally 𧷓, an ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意) and phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *mreːs): semantic 出 (“go out”) + phonetic 買 (OC *mreːʔ, “buy”).

出, which indicates exoactive semantics (Sagart, 1999), was eventually reduced to the etymologically unrelated 士.

Unrelated to 𧶠, which is used as a phonetic component in a number of characters.

買 (OC *mreːʔ, “to buy”) + /-s/ (exoactive) → 賣 (OC *mreːs, “to cause to buy → to sell”)

Exoactive of 買 (OC *mreːʔ, “to buy”) (Sagart, 1995; Schuessler, 2007; Baxter and Sagart, 2014), from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *laj; see there for more.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • derivedProto-Sino-Tibetan*laj “to change, exchange, buy”
  • meaningChinese出 “to go out; to leave; to exit”
    • ideaChinese止 “foot”
    • ideaChinese凵 “to open one's mouth”
  • soundChinese買 “to buy; to purchase”
    • ideaChinese网 “net”
    • soundChinese羅 “net for catching birds”
      • ideaChinese維 “to tie; to fasten; to tie up”
        • meaningChinese糸 “thin silk”
        • soundChinese唯 “to be”
          • meaningChinese口 “mouth, especially the lips and internal mouth cavity (Classifier: 把 c)”
          • soundChinese隹 “short-tailed bird”
    • ideaChinese貝 “shellfish; cowrie”

Meanings

character
  1. to sell
  2. to betray; to sell out
  3. to spare no effort; to do one's best
  4. to show off
  5. to publish (a piece of news)

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

賣：出物貨也。从出从買。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 出售貨物換錢。 例：賣貨、賣花　◎
  2. 背叛他人以利己。 例：賣國、賣友求榮
  3. 炫耀、顯露。 例：賣弄、賣乖、倚老賣老

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

How 賣 was written 字形演變

  1. 賣 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  2. 賣 in Clerical script
    Clerical
    隸書
    Han
  3. 賣 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: 賣