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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

項

xiàng
nape of neck
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 4
  • TOCFL 5
  • radical 頁
  • 12 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *ɡroːŋʔ): phonetic 工 (OC *koːŋ) + semantic 頁 (“head”).

Compare Chepang [script needed] (grong-ko, “to stretch the neck down to eat, as of cattle”), Burmese ချောင်း (hkyaung:, “throat”) (Schuessler, 2007, p. 534).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • soundChinese工 “labour; work (Classifier: 份 c)”
  • meaningChinese頁 “sheet (of paper)”
    • componentChinese首 “head”
    • componentChinese卩 “kneeling person”

Related: Burmese ချောင်း

Meanings

character
  1. nape of neck
  2. neck
  3. item
  4. Classifier for items, tasks, principles, clauses, etc.
  5. sum of money
  6. term

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

項：頭後也。从頁工聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 頸的後部。亦指脖子。 例：頸項、望其項背
  2. 條款、種類。 例：事項、項目
  3. 量詞。計算事物分類或件數的單位。 例：十項建設、女子七項運動
  4. 姓。

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

How 項 was written 字形演變

  1. 項 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  2. 項 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  3. 項 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  4. 項 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: 項