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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

轉

zhuǎn
to turn; to revolve
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 6
  • TOCFL 3
  • radical 車
  • 18 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *tonʔ, *tons): semantic 車 (“carriage”) + phonetic 專 (OC *tjon).

Possibly related to:

* Old Tibetan འདྲུལ ('drul, “to transmit; to communicate”) (Schuessler, 2007), or

* Tibetan སྲུལ (srul, “to move to and fro; to stir”), Burmese ရွေ့ (rwe., “to move; to be displaced”), ရွှေ့ (hrwe., “to move or shift something”) (Starostin).

An allofam is perhaps *don (“round”). Compare Vietnamese tròn (“round; circle; entire; whole”), trọn (“fully; completely; all”), as well as the following Chinese words:

* 團 (OC *doːn, “ball; circle; lump”),

* 摶 (OC *doːn, *doːn, *donʔ, “to roll up into a ball”).

Derivative: 傳 (OC *tons, *don, *dons, “to relay; to pass on; to transfer; relay station; biography; record”).

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專 “to monopolize; to take sole possession”
    • soundChinese叀 “spindle; spinning wheel”
    • meaningChinese又 “again; once more”

Related: Tibetan འདྲུལ, Tibetan སྲུལ, Burmese ရွေ့, Vietnamese tròn

Meanings

character
  1. to turn; to revolve
  2. to wind; to entwine
  3. winding; circuitous
  4. to change; to shift; to alter
  5. to change direction; to turn
  6. to return; to come or go back

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

轉：運也。从車專聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 迴旋環繞。 例：轉圈、公轉、自轉
  2. 繞、逛。 例：我出國這段期間，麻煩您有空到我家轉轉。

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

How 轉 was written 字形演變

  1. 轉 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  2. 轉 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  3. 轉 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: 轉