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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

銀

yín
silver
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 6
  • radical 金
  • 14 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *ŋrɯn): semantic 金 (“metal”) + phonetic 艮 (OC *kɯːns).

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *d-ŋurl. Cognate with Tibetan དངུལ (dngul), Burmese ငွေ (ngwe).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*d-ŋurl
  • meaningChinese金 “copper (Cu)”
  • soundChinese艮 “one of the Eight Trigrams 八卦, symbolizing mountains. (☶)”
    • ideaChinese目 “eye (Classifier: 雙／双 mn-t)”
    • ideaChinese人 “man; person; people (Classifier: 個／个 m c; 隻／只 h)”

Related: Tibetan དངུལ, Burmese ငွေ

Words built on it: 銀行

Meanings

character
  1. silver
  2. silvern; made of silver
  3. silvery; silver-colored; lustrous; white; shiny
  4. cash; money; currency
  5. coin
  6. Classifier for money: yuan; dollar; buck

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

銀：白金也。从金艮聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 化學元素。符號為Ag。金屬元素之一。白色，光澤甚美，質軟，富延展性，易傳熱及導電。產量稀少，自古即被視為貴重金屬。可供合金、製造貨幣、餐具及裝飾品之用。 例：白銀
  2. 金錢、貨幣。 例：銀兩、銀貨兩訖
  3. 白亮的、色白如銀的。 例：銀髮、銀幕
  4. 銀製的、含銀質的。 例：銀箸、銀器
  5. 與貨幣有關的。 例：銀行、銀根
  6. 姓。

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

How 銀 was written 字形演變

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