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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

閃

shǎn
to dodge; to evade
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 4
  • TOCFL 6
  • radical 門
  • 10 strokes

Etymology graph

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Origin

Etymology 1

Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 門 (“gate”) + 人 (“person”) — a person running through a gate.

Possibly iterative devoicing of 燄 (OC *lamʔ, “to be flaming up”) (Schuessler, 2007).

Etymology 2

Ultimately from Hebrew שם (Šēm).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • ideaChinese門 “gate; door; entrance; opening; portal (Classifier: 扇 m mn; 道 m c; 度 c; 條／条 c; 隻／只 c; 片 mn)”
  • ideaChinese人 “man; person; people (Classifier: 個／个 m c; 隻／只 h)”
  • derived (ultimately)Hebrewשם

Meanings

character
  1. to dodge; to evade
  2. to twist; to sprain; to pull a muscle
  3. to flash
  4. lightning; flash
  5. to sparkle; to shine
  6. sparkling; shiny

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

閃：闚頭門中也。从人在門中。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 光亮突現或忽隱忽現。 例：閃光、閃爍、星星一閃一閃
  2. 事物突然出現並快速消逝。 例：身影一閃、意念一閃
  3. 亮光耀動的樣子。多用疊詞。 例：閃閃發光、金光閃閃
  4. 扭身躲避。 例：閃躲、閃避　◎
  5. 扭傷、挫傷。 例：他因滑倒而閃了腰。

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

How 閃 was written 字形演變

  1. 閃 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  2. 閃 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
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 閃