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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

辦

bàn
to deal with; to handle; to manage; to take care of
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 4
  • radical 辛
  • 16 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *breːns): phonetic 辡 (OC *prenʔ, *brenʔ) + semantic 力 (“strength”).

Cognate with Tibetan བྲེལ་བ (brel ba, “to be employed; busy”) (Schuessler, 2007). Note also similarities to Burmese ဖန် (hpan, “to make, create”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • soundChinese辡
  • meaningChinese力 “physical strength; physical power; energy”

Related: Tibetan བྲེལ་བ, Burmese ဖန်

Words built on it: 辦法, 辦公室, 怎麼辦

Meanings

character
  1. to deal with; to handle; to manage; to take care of
  2. to prepare; to get something ready
  3. to process; to obtain (e.g. a visa/passport)
  4. to set up; to run
  5. to bring to justice; to punish
  6. to kill off; to murder

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

辦：致力也。从力辡聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 處理。 例：辦事、經辦、公事公辦
  2. 創設、經營。 例：興辦、創辦、辦學校
  3. 懲罰、治罪。 例：嚴辦、查辦、依法究辦
  4. 購買。 例：採辦、辦貨、置辦行頭
  5. 準備、置備。 例：辦酒席

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

How 辦 was written 字形演變

  1. 辦 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  2. 辦 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
  • Written form — n/a
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 辦