奔波 Origin — Dong Chinese Dictionary

bēnbō HSK7

rush about

bēn, bèn run fast

Depicts a running person (夭) with more than one 止 (foot) components to indicate faster movement. Similar in origin to 走.

Components

夭 Iconic component

yāo, wò, wāi die young

犇 Sound Iconic component

bēn run fast

Depicted three feet.

Change in form

Due to historical stylistic changes, this component is less similar to 犇 than it was in ancient scripts.

Character Evolution

Bronze form — Bronze Early Western Zhou ~1000 BC

Regular Modern

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Component uses

Sound (0 of 1 verified)

锛

Historical Pronunciations

	Middle Chinese	Old Chinese	Gloss
Baxter-Sagart	pwon	pˤur	run (v.)

說文解字

《說文》：“奔，走也。从夭，賁省聲。與走同意，俱从夭。”

Sources

Character origin: 漢語多功能字庫季旭昇《說文新證》p.768
Readings & variants: Unicode
Historical pronunciations: Baxter-Sagart
Historical images: Academia Sinica
Etymology: Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字)

bō waves

Phonosemantic compound. 氵 represents the meaning and 皮 represents the sound.

Components

氵 Meaning component

shui, shuǐ water

氵 is a component form of 水.

皮 Sound component

pí skin

Change in sound

波 and 皮 don't sound similar in modern Mandarin due to historical phonetic changes. They were more similar in Old Chinese.
波 *pˤaj
皮 *m-[p](r)aj

Character Evolution

Regular Modern

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Component uses

Sound (1 of 3 verified)

婆啵菠

Meaning (0 of 1 verified)

啵

Historical Pronunciations

	Middle Chinese	Old Chinese	Gloss
Baxter-Sagart	pa	pˤaj	wave (n.)

說文解字

《說文》：“波，水涌流也。从水，皮聲。”

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)

奔 bēn, bèn run fast

Components

Character Evolution

Component uses

Sound (0 of 1 verified)

Historical Pronunciations

說文解字

Sources

波 bō waves

Components

Character Evolution

Component uses

Sound (1 of 3 verified)

Meaning (0 of 1 verified)

Historical Pronunciations

說文解字

Sources

bēn, bèn run fast

bō waves