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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

雜

zá
miscellaneous; mixed
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 3
  • TOCFL 6
  • radical 隹
  • 18 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *zuːb): semantic 衣 + phonetic 集 (OC *zub) with an original reference to a combination of various colours put together, perhaps linked to dyed clothes. A more comprehensible variant is 襍.

Cognate with 集 (OC *zub, “to gather; to collect”) (Schuessler, 2007). Note similarities to Burmese သုပ် (sup, “to mix ingredients”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese衣 “garment; clothes; clothing (Classifier: 件)”
  • soundChinese集 “to collect; to gather”
    • ideaChinese隹 “short-tailed bird”
    • ideaChinese木 “tree; woody plant”

Related: Burmese သုပ်

Meanings

character
  1. miscellaneous; mixed
  2. extra; irregular
  3. having all kinds of people, especially bad people
  4. entrails for food
  5. to mix

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

雜：五彩相會。从衣集聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 混合、摻入。 例：摻雜、夾雜
  2. 混亂、沒有次序的。 例：雜坐、雜交、雜居
  3. 不單純、多種類的。 例：複雜、繁雜、雜貨
  4. 不是主要的。 例：雜支、雜稅、雜糧

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

How 雜 was written 字形演變

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