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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

髮

fà
hair
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • TOCFL 3
  • radical 髟
  • 15 strokes
  • 髪
  • 发

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *pod): semantic 髟 (“long hair”) + phonetic 犮 (OC *boːd).

The original form 𩠙 was composed of 首 and 犬. According to Takashi Takada (高田忠周), 犬 is an abbreviation of 犮 (OC *boːd).

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-pu. Alternatively, it may be derived from 發 (OC *pad, “to sprout”) (Schuessler, 2007).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*s-pu
  • meaningChinese髟 “drooping of long hair”
  • soundChinese犮 “the appearance or shape of a dog running”
    • ideaChinese犬 “dog”
    • ideaChinese丿 “left-falling stroke, usually read as 撇”

Meanings

character
  1. hair
  2. grass and trees (on a mountain); vegetation
  3. a surname

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

髮：根也。从髟犮聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 人類頭皮上所長的毛。 例：頭髮、白髮
  2. 形似頭髮的。 例：髮菜、髮草

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

How 髮 was written 字形演變

  1. 髮 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 髮 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  3. 髮 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  4. 髮 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: 髮