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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

重

zhòng
heavy
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 3
  • TOCFL 3
  • radical 里
  • 9 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *doŋ, *doŋʔ, *doŋs) and ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): semantic 人 (“man”) + phonetic 東 (OC *toːŋ, “bag”) – a man carrying a bag. A glyph 土 (“earth”) was later added to show that the bag-carrying man is standing on the ground. From this composition (𡍺) is the current form. In the modern form, the man on top can be seen as 亻 (however, the upper part of the character is unrelated to 千).

See also 以, in which a person is carrying something, 央, in which a person is carrying a pole, and 年, in which a person is carrying the harvest.

Schuessler (2007) notes that the etymology is uncertain and compares the word to Burmese စုံ (cum, “to be sufficient; pair”), which STEDT puts under Proto-Sino-Tibetan *dzum ~ tsum (“pair”).

Pronunciation 3 is the exoactive derivation of pronunciation 1.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese人 “man; person; people (Classifier: 個／个 m c; 隻／只 h)”
  • soundChinese東 “east”

Related: Burmese စုံ

Words built on it: 重要, 動, 種, 重新, 重大, 量, 鍾, 尊重, 重量, 衝, 嚴重

Meanings

character
  1. heavy
  2. weight
  3. deep; grave; serious; severe; hard
  4. considerable (in amount)

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

重：厚也。从壬東聲。凡重之屬皆从重。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 再、另。 例：重來、重遊故地、重修舊好
  2. 層層複疊的。 例：重門
  3. 量詞。計算相疊累積物的單位。 例：九重天、千重山、萬重水

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

How 重 was written 字形演變

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

  • Structural decomposition (chaizi) — See upstream
  • 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: 重