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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

輛

/li̯ɑŋ⁵¹/
Classifier for wheeled vehicles. ⇒ all nouns using this classifier
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 2
  • radical 車
  • 15 strokes

Etymology graph

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *raŋs): semantic 車 (“vehicle”) + phonetic 兩 (OC *raŋʔ, *raŋs).

Generally thought to be the exopassive of 兩 (OC *raŋʔ, *raŋs, “two”), i.e. "that which is paired (a set of wheels)" (Schuessler, 2007). That said, note similarities to Proto-Tibeto-Burman *s-ljaŋ (“cart”), whence Burmese လှည်း (hlany:, “cart”) (Luce, 1981).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese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)”
  • soundChinese兩 “two”
    • ideaChinese一 “one”
    • ideaChinese㒳

Related: Proto-Tibeto-Burman *s-ljaŋ, Burmese လှည်း

Meanings

character
  1. Classifier for wheeled vehicles. ⇒ all nouns using this classifier

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 量詞。計算車子數目的單位。 例：三輛車、一輛牛車

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

How 輛 was written 字形演變

  1. 輛 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 輛 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  3. 輛 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  4. 輛 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  5. 輛 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
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 輛