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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

雲

yún
cloud (Classifier: 片 m; 朵 m; 嚿 c)
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 5
  • radical 雨
  • 12 strokes
  • 云

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  • borrowed
  • derived
  • parts
  • meaning component
  • sound component
  • related
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Origin

Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意) and phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *ɢun): semantic 雨 (“rain”) + phonetic 云 (OC *ɢun, “cloud”). Originally written 云, with the 雨 radical added to 云 to distinguish from the borrowed sense of “to speak”.

Very few outside cognates exist. Starostin compares it with Mizo vân (“sky, the skies, heaven”) and Karbi inghun (“cloud”).

Alternatively, this is a derivation from a root meaning “to revolve”. Compare 運 (OC *ɢuns, “to move”), 回 (OC *ɡuːl, “to whirl, to circle”) (Schuessler, 2007).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese雨 “rain (Classifier: 陣／阵; 場／场)”
  • soundChinese云 “to say; to speak (used when quoting from a source)”

Related: Mizo vân, Karbi inghun

Meanings

character
  1. cloud (Classifier: 片 m; 朵 m; 嚿 c)
  2. cloud
  3. to experience or judge something indirectly (without firsthand experience); to be an armchair expert
  4. many; numerous
  5. a surname

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

雲：山川气也。从雨，云象雲回轉形。凡雲之屬皆从雲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 水蒸氣遇冷凝成細水滴，而懸浮在空中的聚合體。 例：白雲、雲海、烏雲蔽日
  2. 比喻眾多。 例：雲集
  3. 雲南省的簡稱。 例：雲貴高原
  4. 姓。

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

How 雲 was written 字形演變

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