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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

醒

xǐng
to sober up; to regain consciousness
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 4
  • TOCFL 5
  • radical 酉
  • 16 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *seːŋ, *seːŋʔ, *seːŋs): semantic 酉 (“alcohol”) + phonetic 星 (OC *sleːŋ).

Cognate with 清 (OC *sʰleŋ, “clear”) (Schuessler, 2007). See there for more.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese酉 “an alcoholic drink vessel”
  • soundChinese星 “star (Classifier: 顆／颗 m; 粒 c mn)”
    • soundChinese晶 “brilliant; glittering”
    • soundChinese生 “to live; to subsist; to exist”
      • ideaChinese屮 “new birth of plant”
      • ideaChinese一 “one”

Words built on it: 提醒, 清醒

Meanings

character
  1. to sober up; to regain consciousness
  2. to awaken; to wake up
  3. to be awake
  4. to realize; to become aware of
  5. to be striking; to catch one's attention
  6. to keep dough till it reaches the desired state of softness, evenness, etc. (after mixing it)

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

醒：醉解也。从酉星聲。按：酲字注云：一曰醉而覺也。則古酲，亦音醒也。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 意識恢復到清晰的狀態。 例：睡醒、清醒、甦醒
  2. 使覺得清明。 例：醒眼、醒目

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

How 醒 was written 字形演變

  1. 醒 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  2. 醒 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: 醒