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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

餅

/piŋ²¹⁴/
flat wheaten food, such as flatbread, pancake, biscuit, and pie (Classifier: 個／个 m c; 塊／块 m c; 張／张 m; 嚿 c)
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 5
  • TOCFL 5
  • radical 食
  • 14 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *peŋʔ): semantic 飠 (“food”) + phonetic 并 (OC *peŋ, *peŋs); traditional glyph form during Ming and Qing dynasty used to advocate 幷 (as in 餠) based on the influence of Shuowen.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*(p/b)ljaŋ “plank; palm; flat surface; wing”
  • meaningChinese食 “to eat; to have a meal; to take in”
    • ideaChinese亼 “mouth”
      • ideaChinese入 “to enter; to go into”
      • ideaChinese一 “one”
    • ideaChinese皀 “Prepared food, a vessel full of food (as in 即 and 既, in which is simplified)”
  • soundChinese并 “(geography) Bing Province (province in ancient China)”

Meanings

character
  1. flat wheaten food, such as flatbread, pancake, biscuit, and pie (Classifier: 個／个 m c; 塊／块 m c; 張／张 m; 嚿 c)
  2. noodles
  3. any flatbread-shaped object
  4. Western-style pastry (usually cake) (Classifier: 件 c)
  5. pie (the whole of a wealth or resource, to be divided in parts) (Classifier: 個／个 c)
  6. Classifier for flat objects, especially ones that are crumpled or tangled.

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

餅：麪餈也。从食并聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 用麵粉或米粉做成的食品，大多呈薄扁而圓的形狀。 例：月餅、燒餅、蔥油餅
  2. 形如餅狀的東西。 例：鐵餅、柿餅

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

How 餅 was written 字形演變

  1. 餅 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  2. 餅 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: 餅