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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

雪

xuě
snow
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 3
  • radical 雨
  • 11 strokes

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Origin

Ancient simplification of 䨮, which is in turn phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *sqʰʷed): semantic 雨 (“rain”) + phonetic 彗 (OC *sɢʷeds, *ɢʷeds, *sɢʷids).

Schuessler (2007) considers this to be related to Kra-Dai words: Proto-Tai *hnəiᴬ¹ (“snow”), Proto-Kam-Sui *ʔnuːi¹ (“snow”).

Starostin reconstructs Proto-Sino-Tibetan *suăt (“snow”), comparing this with Tibetan སད (sad, “frost, cold air, cold, coldness”), but this connection may be unlikely considering the phonetic part of this character.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*suăt “snow”
  • meaningChinese雨 “rain (Classifier: 陣／阵; 場／场)”
  • soundChinese彗 “broom”
    • ideaChinese甡 “broom”
    • ideaChinese又 “again; once more”

Related: Proto-Kam-Sui *ʔnuːi¹, Tibetan སད

Words built on it: 下雪

Meanings

character
  1. snow
  2. to snow
  3. to wipe away; to clean
  4. ice; product containing ice
  5. to refrigerate; to store in the refrigerator
  6. to set aside; to shelve

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 空氣中的水蒸氣遇冷至零度以下而凝結降落的六角形白色晶體。 例：白雪、下雪、積雪
  2. 洗刷、清除。 例：雪恥、雪恨、洗雪
  3. 顏色像雪一般白的。 例：雪白、雪亮

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

How 雪 was written 字形演變

  1. 雪 in Oracle bone script
    Oracle bone
    甲骨文
    Shang, c. 1250–1050 BCE
  2. 雪 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  3. 雪 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  4. 雪 in Clerical script
    Clerical
    隸書
    Han
  5. 雪 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
  • Written form — n/a
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 雪