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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

養

yǎng
to raise; to rear
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 5
  • radical 食
  • 15 strokes

Etymology graph

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Origin

Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意) and phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *laŋʔ, *laŋs): phonetic 羊 (OC *laŋ, “sheep”) + semantic 食 (“to feed”).

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-klawŋ (“to guard; to tend cattle; to graze; to be at leisure”), whence Tibetan སྐྱོང (skyong, “to keep; to nurture”), Burmese ကျောင်း (kyaung:, “to look after, tend”) (STEDT).

; “oxygen”

From 養氣／养气 (yǎngqì, “oxygen gas”)

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • soundChinese羊 “caprid (e.g. sheep, goat, antelope, etc.) (Classifier: 隻／只 m c)”
  • 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)”

Related: Tibetan སྐྱོང, Burmese ကျောင်း

Meanings

character
  1. to raise; to rear
  2. to support; to provide for; to bring up
  3. to give birth to
  4. to rest; to convalesce
  5. to maintain
  6. to cultivate; to form

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

養：供養也。从食羊聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 晚輩供養長輩。 例：奉養父母、祭豐不如養薄

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

How 養 was written 字形演變

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