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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

麼

/mə/
A particle placed after the topic of a compound sentence, used to express tactfulness.
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 1
  • radical 麻
  • 14 strokes
  • 嗎
  • 吗

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Origin

Etymology 1

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *maːlʔ): phonetic 麻 (OC *mraːl) + semantic 幺 (“small, tiny”).

From 物 (MC mjut, “thing”), from 什物 (MC dzyip mjut, “miscellaneous items”) > 什麼／什么 (shénme) (Norman, 1988; Zhang, 1982).

Etymology 5

Probably from 物 (MC mjut, “what”) (Zhang, 2001; Jiang, 2018).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • soundChinese麻 “general name for hemp, flax, jute, etc.”
    • ideaChinese厂 “cliff; habitable cave on a cliff”
    • ideaChinese𣏟 “ramie”
  • meaningChinese幺 “tiny; minute”

Words built on it: 什麼, 怎麼, 為什麼, 怎麼樣, 這麼, 那麼, 怎麼辦

Meanings

character
  1. A particle placed after the topic of a compound sentence, used to express tactfulness.
  2. A suffix for forming pronouns or adverbs.

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

麼：細也。从幺麻聲。

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 助詞。表示有所斟酌的語氣。 例：要幫他麼，又想到他是那麼可恨；不幫他麼，又覺得他是那麼可憐。
  2. 詞尾。 例：甚麼、這麼、那麼

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

How 麼 was written 字形演變

  1. 麼 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  2. 麼 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
  • Written form — n/a
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 麼