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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

醫

yī
medicinal; medicine
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 1
  • TOCFL 6
  • radical 酉
  • 18 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *qɯ): phonetic 殹 (OC *qiːs) + semantic 酉 (“liquor”).

Schuessler (2007) minimally reconstructs Old Chinese *ʔə and suggests it is cognate with Proto-Hlai *ja¹ (“medicine”), Proto-Kam-Sui *gja² (“medicine; to cure”), Proto-Tai *ˀjɯəᴬ (“medicine”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • soundChinese殹 “The sound of groaning.”
  • meaningChinese酉 “an alcoholic drink vessel”

Related: Proto-Hlai *ja¹, Proto-Kam-Sui *gja², Proto-Tai *ˀjɯəᴬ

Words built on it: 醫院, 醫生

Meanings

character
  1. medicinal; medicine
  2. doctor
  3. to cure; to treat
  4. to punish

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

醫：治病工也。殹，惡姿也；醫之性然。得酒而使，从酉。王育說。一曰殹，病聲。酒所以治病也。《周禮》有醫酒。古者巫彭初作醫。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 治療、救治。 例：醫治、醫療、醫病
  2. 治療疾病的人。 例：牙醫、獸醫、名醫
  3. 有關醫療醫術方面的。 例：醫術、醫德

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

How 醫 was written 字形演變

  1. 醫 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  2. 醫 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  3. 醫 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: 醫