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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

軍

jūn
armed forces; army; troops
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 5
  • TOCFL 6
  • radical 車
  • 9 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声): semantic 車 (“chariot”) + phonetic 勹. The phonetic component here is not 勹 (OC *pruː), but the original form of 螾 (OC *lin, *linʔ), which also acts as the phonetic component of 旬 (OC *sɢʷin), 勻 (OC *ɢʷin) and 云 (OC *ɢun).

The Shuowen Jiezi interprets it as ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 車 (“cart; chariot”) + 勹 (“to surround”).

Etymology not clear. Perhaps cognate with Tibetan གཡུལ (g.yul, “army; battle”) (Schuessler, 2007).

Alternatively, it is a derivation from 運 (OC *ɢuns, “to move”), or related to 群 (OC *ɡlun).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • ideaChinese車 “land vehicle; (specifically) car (Classifier: 輛／辆 m; 部 m c; 臺／台 m mn; 架 c; 頂／顶 mn; 張／张 mn-t; 乘 m)”
  • ideaChinese勹 “person bending over”

Related: Tibetan གཡུལ

Words built on it: 運, 揮

Meanings

character
  1. armed forces; army; troops
  2. corps; army (consisting of two or more divisions) (Classifier: 個／个)
  3. soldiers
  4. to station
  5. the punishment of being transported to a remote location for penal servitude
  6. a kind of first-level administrative division during the Tang, Five Dynasties, and Song eras, the command of a jiedushi (節度使)

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

軍：圜圍也。四千人爲軍。从車，从包省。軍，兵車也。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 武裝部隊。 例：三軍、十萬大軍
  2. 陸軍編制中，大於師而低於軍團的戰略單位名稱。
  3. 古時將犯人送至邊疆服勞役的刑罰。 例：充軍

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

How 軍 was written 字形演變

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