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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

餘

yú
to remain; to have left
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 4
  • TOCFL 7
  • radical 食
  • 15 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *la): semantic 食 + phonetic 余 (OC *la).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • 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余 “I; me”

Meanings

character
  1. to remain; to have left
  2. time after an event
  3. over; more than
  4. surplus; remainder; excess
  5. remaining; spare; surplus
  6. salt

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

餘：饒也。从食余聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 多出的、剩下的。 例：有餘、餘額、不遺餘力
  2. 某一事情、情況以外或以後的時間。 例：課餘、業餘、公餘
  3. 殘留的、將盡的。 例：餘溫、餘生、餘燼
  4. 其他的。 例：餘念、餘事
  5. 不盡的、未完的。 例：死有餘辜、心有餘悸、餘音繞梁
  6. 整數以外或度量單位等的零數。 例：三十有餘、年四十餘

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

How 餘 was written 字形演變

  1. 餘 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  2. 餘 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  3. 餘 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: 餘