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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

骨

gǔ
bone
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 4
  • TOCFL 6
  • radical 骨
  • 10 strokes

Etymology graph

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

Etymology 1

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *kuːd): phonetic 冎 + semantic 肉. 冎 is the original pictogram for this character; 肉 was added later to distinguish.

Usually related to Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s/m/g-rus (“bone”), whence Tibetan རུས (rus), Nuosu ꃷꅍ (vup ddu), S'gaw Karen တၢ်ဃံ (ta̱xee), but there is no trace of a medial *r in Chinese (Schuessler, 2007). Alternatively, Luce (1981) compares Burmese ခုတ် (hkut, “to chop, hew”), which appears phonetically much closer, as well as semantically reasonable, if animal bones were interpreted as "hewed pieces".

Etymology 2

From English quarter.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • soundChinese冎 “bone”
  • meaningChinese肉 “meat; flesh”
  • borrowedEnglishquarter “Each of four equal parts into which something can be divided; a fourth part.”
    • inheritedMiddle Englishquarter
      • borrowedAnglo-Normanquarter
    • borrowedFrenchcartayer

Related: Tibetan རུས, Nuosu ꃷꅍ, S'gaw Karen တၢ်ဃံ, Burmese ခုတ်

Words built on it: 體, 髒

Meanings

character
  1. bone
  2. skeleton
  3. frame; framework
  4. moral character
  5. sarcasm
  6. the hell (usually in a question in mild disdain)

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

骨：肉之覈也。从冎有肉。凡骨之屬皆从骨。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 動物體內支持身體的支架組織。 例：筋骨、骨骼、脊椎骨
  2. 像骨骼一樣能支撐物體的架子。 例：鋼骨、傘骨
  3. 氣概、風格。 例：傲骨、俠骨柔情、仙風道骨

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

How 骨 was written 字形演變

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