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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

鬚

/ɕy⁵⁵/
beard; whisker (Classifier: 條／条 c; 撇 c)
  • Ideogrammatic compound 會意
  • HSK 2
  • radical 髟
  • 22 strokes
  • 須

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Origin

Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意) and phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *so): semantic 髟 (“hair”) + phonetic 須 (OC *so, “beard”).

Originally written 須, see there for more.

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-nwat ~ *s-nut (“mouth”) (Schuessler, 2007). Compare Tibetan སྣོད (snod, “vessel”), Burmese နှုတ် (hnut, “mouth”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*s-nwat ~ *s-nut “mouth”
  • meaningChinese髟 “drooping of long hair”
  • soundChinese須 “must; have to; should”
    • componentChinese彡 “hair”
    • componentChinese頁 “sheet (of paper)”
      • componentChinese首 “head”
      • componentChinese卩 “kneeling person”

Related: Tibetan སྣོད, Burmese နှုတ်

Meanings

character
  1. beard; whisker (Classifier: 條／条 c; 撇 c)
  2. antenna; feeler
  3. whisker-like

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 生於人類下巴的鬍子。 例：鬍鬚、鬚髯
  2. 動物的觸鬚。 例：羊鬚、鼠鬚、虎鬚
  3. 像鬚一樣的東西。 例：參鬚、鬚根

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

How 鬚 was written 字形演變

  1. 鬚 in Oracle bone script
    Oracle bone
    甲骨文
    Shang, c. 1250–1050 BCE
  2. 鬚 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  3. 鬚 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  4. 鬚 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  5. 鬚 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  6. 鬚 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
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 鬚