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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

邊

biān
edge; side; margin; brim
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 1
  • TOCFL 2
  • radical 辵
  • 19 strokes

Etymology graph

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

Etymology 1

Originally 臱. Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *mpeːn): semantic 辶 (“walking; movement”) + phonetic 臱 (OC *men). The semantic component 辵 (now 辶) was added during bronze inscriptions.

Perhaps cognate with 偏 (OC *pʰen, *pʰens, “side; oblique”), 片 (OC *pʰeːns, “partial; one-sided”), 諞 (OC *ben, *brenʔ, *benʔ, “glib-tongued; insincere”) (Schuessler, 2007).

Based on Old Vietnamese data, Gong (2019) proposes the additional preinitial *tə- to the Baxter-Sagart reconstruction.

; “to have hot pot”

Etymology 2

Possibly from etymology 1 (Zhang, 1997). Compare other interrogative words that may originate from nouns of location, such as Hainanese 帶 /带 (“place; where”), Dongguan Cantonese 鼠 (syu², “which”) (< 處 (“place”)).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese辵 “to walk for a while and be still for a while”
    • ideaChinese彳 “to walk slowly”
    • ideaChinese止 “foot”
  • soundChinese臱 “to not see”
    • meaningChinese自 “self, oneself; one's own”
    • soundChinese丙 “the third of the ten heavenly stems”

Related: Hainanese 帶, Cantonese 鼠

Meanings

character
  1. edge; side; margin; brim
  2. decorative border
  3. side (place next to an object)
  4. border; boundary
  5. edge; side (of 2D objects) (Classifier: 條／条)
  6. side (Classifier: 條／条)

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 指兩國或兩地區的交界處或近交界處。 例：邊境、邊界、墾邊
  2. 兩旁。 例：河邊、路邊、岸邊
  3. 指一個平面的周圍或際限。 例：桌邊、天邊、邊緣
  4. 方向。 例：左邊、前邊、外邊
  5. 物體或衣裙邊緣的裝飾。 例：滾邊、鑲邊、花邊
  6. 頭緒。 例：說了半天，還摸不著邊。

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

How 邊 was written 字形演變

  1. 邊 in Oracle bone script
    Oracle bone
    甲骨文
    Shang, c. 1250–1050 BCE
  2. 邊 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  3. 邊 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  4. 邊 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  5. 邊 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: 邊