Original meaning: city wall
In ancient scripts 丁 was written in two different ways: (1) depicting the walls of a city, which is now written as 圍, or (2) depicting a nail, which is now written as 釘.
Character Evolution
Component uses
Historical Pronunciations
| Middle Chinese | Old Chinese | Gloss | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baxter-Sagart | teng | tˤeŋ | 4th heavenly stem |
| teng | tˤeŋ | nail (n.) | |
| treang | tˤreŋ | sound of beating |
說文解字
《說文》：“丁，夏時萬物皆丁實。象形。丁承丙，象人心。”
Sources
- Character origin
- 季旭昇《說文新證》p. 962
- Readings & variants
- Unicode
- Historical pronunciations
- Baxter-Sagart
- Historical images
- Academia Sinica
- Etymology
- Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字)
Character Evolution
Historical Pronunciations
| Old Chinese | |
|---|---|
| Zhengzhang | dawʔ |
說文解字
擊也。从攴，肈省聲。
Sources
- Readings & variants
- Unicode
- Historical pronunciations
- Zhengzhang Shangfang
- Historical images
- Academia Sinica
- Etymology
- Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字)
Depicts a flagpole. There is a circle in the middle marking the center of the flagpole. In older forms of the character, the flagpole has streamers at the top and bottom used to show the direction of the wind.
Character Evolution
Component uses
Historical Pronunciations
| Middle Chinese | Old Chinese | Gloss | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baxter-Sagart | trjuwng | truŋ | center |
| trjuwngH | truŋ-s | hit the center |
說文解字
《說文》：“中，內也。从口、丨，上下通。，古文中。，籀文中。”
Sources
- Character origin
- 漢語多功能字庫
- Readings & variants
- Unicode
- Historical pronunciations
- Baxter-Sagart
- Historical images
- Academia Sinica
- Etymology
- Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字)