Depicts an adult man facing forward and standing erect. The meaning later shifted to "big".
Character Evolution
Component uses
Historical Pronunciations
| Middle Chinese | Old Chinese | Gloss | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baxter-Sagart | daH | lˤat-s (MC F!) | big |
| dajH | lˤa[t]-s | big |
說文解字
《說文》：“大，天大、地大、人亦大，故大象人形。”
Sources
- Character origin
- 季旭昇《說文新證》p.764
- Readings & variants
- Unicode
- Historical pronunciations
- Baxter-Sagart
- Historical images
- Academia Sinica
- Etymology
- Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字)
Original meaning: divide
Depicts a knife (刂) cutting a gem into two halves (玨), based on the original meaning "to divide". The meaning later shifted to "division", "group", and "team".
Components
Character Evolution
Historical Pronunciations
| Middle Chinese | Old Chinese | Gloss | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baxter-Sagart | paen | pˤ<r>an | divide, distribute |
說文解字
《說文》：“班，分瑞玉。从玨，从刀。”
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)