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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

質

zhì
matter; material; substance
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 4
  • radical 貝
  • 15 strokes

Etymology graph

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  • borrowed
  • derived
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  • meaning component
  • sound component
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Origin

Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 斦 + 貝. Zhu Junsheng also interpret this as a phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声), where he regards 斦 as an original form of 櫍 (OC *tjid).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • ideaChinese斦 “base for beating or chopping”
  • ideaChinese貝 “shellfish; cowrie”

Meanings

character
  1. matter; material; substance
  2. nature; intrinsic quality; essence
  3. quality
  4. to query; to ask about
  5. simple; plain

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

質：以物相贅。从貝从斦。闕。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 以人或財物作為抵押。 例：質押
  2. 被抵押的人或物。 例：人質

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

How 質 was written 字形演變

  1. 質 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 質 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  3. 質 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  4. 質 in Clerical script
    Clerical
    隸書
    Han
  5. 質 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: 質