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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

農

nóng
to cultivate; to farm
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 3
  • radical 辰
  • 13 strokes

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Origin

Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 林 (“vegetation”) + 辰 (“hoe”) — to remove weeds.

In the bronze inscriptions, a semantic 田 was added.

The 林 later corrupted into 𦥑 and the 田 into 囟 and in the clerical script they finally combined into 曲.

Probably Sino-Tibetan. Cognate with 耨 (OC *noːɡs, *nuːɡ, “hoe, rake; to weed”), possibly derived from it with the terminative suffix *-ŋ for action with a goal, i.e. "to get a field hoed" > "cultivated"; compare 亡 (OC *maŋ, “to disappear”) from 無 (OC *ma, “(there is) no”) (Schuessler, 2007).

Huang (2000), Norman (1983) and Zhou (1986) hypothesised that this is the same etymon as 儂 (OC *nuːŋ, “person, I, me”). See there for more.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • ideaChinese林 “forest; grove; woods”
  • ideaChinese辰 “to vibrate”

Words built on it: 濃

Meanings

character
  1. to cultivate; to farm
  2. land cultivation; farming; agriculture
  3. farmer; grower
  4. Nun
  5. a surname

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 耕種事業。 例：士、農、工、商
  2. 從事耕種的人。 例：花農、菜農、果農
  3. 與農業有關的。 例：農具、農藥
  4. 姓。

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

How 農 was written 字形演變

  1. 農 in Oracle bone script
    Oracle bone
    甲骨文
    Shang, c. 1250–1050 BCE
  2. 農 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  3. 農 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  4. 農 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  5. 農 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: 農