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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

身

shēn
body
  • Pictogram
  • HSK 1
  • radical 身
  • 7 strokes

Etymology graph

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Origin

Pictogram (象形): from a pictograph of a pregnant woman. See also the reversed version 㐆. Unrelated to 射.

STEDT relates it to Proto-Sino-Tibetan *sja-n ~ *sin (“flesh; animal; body”), but recent Old Chinese reconstructions would not support this etymology.

Because 身 is used as a phonetic for 仁 (OC *niŋ) in excavated texts, Baxter and Sagart (2012, 2014) reconstruct the initial as nasal. This would allow for a comparison to Tibetan སྙིང (snying, “heart”), Japhug tɯsni (“heart”) (Baxter and Sagart, 2012; Zhang, Jacques and Lai, 2019), which are from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-niŋ (“heart; mind; brain”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • partChinese丶 “An ancient punctuation mark.”
  • partChinese且 “this”
  • partChinese丿 “left-falling stroke, usually read as 撇”

Related: Tibetan སྙིང, Japhug tɯsni, Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-niŋ

Words built on it: 身上, 全身, 自身, 躺, 身高, 身份, 本身, 身體, 身材, 躲

Meanings

character
  1. body
  2. body; main part
  3. oneself
  4. in person; personally
  5. I; me
  6. life; one's (entire) life

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

身：躳也。象人之身。从人𠂆聲。凡身之屬皆从身。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 軀體的總稱，或專指軀幹。 例：轉身、翻身、人面蛇身
  2. 物體的中心或主要部分。 例：車身、船身、機身
  3. 親自、自己。 例：以身作則、身先士卒、身臨其境
  4. 資格、地位。 例：身敗名裂
  5. 量詞。計算佛像數量的單位。 例：夾道兩旁有菩薩五百身。

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

How 身 was written 字形演變

  1. 身 in Oracle bone script
    Oracle bone
    甲骨文
    Shang, c. 1250–1050 BCE
  2. 身 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  3. 身 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  4. 身 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  5. 身 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  6. 身 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

  • Structural decomposition (chaizi) — See upstream
  • 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
  • Written form — n/a
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 身