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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

連

lián
man-drawn carriage
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 3
  • TOCFL 4
  • radical 辵
  • 11 strokes

Etymology graph

  • inherited
  • borrowed
  • derived
  • parts
  • meaning component
  • sound component
  • related
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Origin

Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 辶 (“to walk”) + 車 (“chariot”) – man-drawn carriage.

According to Duan Yucai, 聯 /联 (lián) and 連 are two characters for a same word, with the former used in the Zhou dynasty and the latter in the Han dynasty.

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-rjan (“equal; to place in a row; to align; row”); related to 聯 (OC *ɡ·ron) (STEDT; Schuessler, 2007).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*s-rjan “equal; to place in a row; to align; row”
  • ideaChinese辵 “to walk for a while and be still for a while”
    • ideaChinese彳 “to walk slowly”
    • ideaChinese止 “foot”
  • 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)”

Meanings

character
  1. man-drawn carriage
  2. to link; to join; to connect
  3. to ally with; to unite
  4. to involve; to implicate
  5. to simultaneously gain
  6. to include; including; counting

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

連：員連也。从辵从車。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 接合。 例：連接、連合、連成一片
  2. 接續。 例：連續
  3. 軍隊的編制單位。在營以下，排以上。
  4. 介詞： (1)引進對象，表示包含在內。 例：連他一共四個人，一部車剛好坐得下。 (2)引進對象，表示強調，下文多有「也」、「都」等相呼應，相當於「甚至」。[例]他最近可忙了，連好好吃頓飯的時間都沒有。
  5. 姓。

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

How 連 was written 字形演變

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