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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

贊

zàn
to help; to support
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 4
  • radical 貝
  • 19 strokes
  • 賛
  • 贈
  • 赞
  • 赠

Etymology graph

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  • meaning component
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Origin

Etymology 1

Originally 賛. Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 㚘 + 貝 (“money”) – to help with money.

Now phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *ʔsaːns): phonetic 兟 (OC *srin) + semantic 貝 (“money”).

Etymology 3

For pronunciation and definitions of 贊 – see 讚 (“to praise; to commend; to eulogize; to like; etc.”).

(This character is a variant form of 讚).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • ideaChinese㚘 “to walk with a partner or companion”
  • soundChinese兟
  • ideaChinese貝 “shellfish; cowrie”

Meanings

character
  1. to help; to support
  2. to agree
  3. a form and style of writing that summarizes and concludes a narrative, biography, or portrait, etc.

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

贊：見也。从貝从兟。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 佐助、輔導。 例：贊助、贊理
  2. 以稱述評論為主要內容的文體。可分為雜贊、哀贊、史贊三種。如夏侯湛有〈東方朔畫贊〉、袁宏有〈三國名臣序贊〉。

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

How 贊 was written 字形演變

  1. 贊 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  2. 贊 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: 贊