揭秘 Origin — Dong Chinese Dictionary

jiēmì

reveal

jiē raise

Phonosemantic compound. 扌 represents the meaning and 曷 represents the sound.

Components

扌 Meaning component

shou, shǒu hand

扌 is a component form of 手.

曷 Sound component

hé, è, hè why? what? where?

Character Evolution

Seal form — Seal Shuowen ~100 AD

Regular Modern

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Historical Pronunciations

	Middle Chinese	Old Chinese	Gloss
Baxter-Sagart	gjet	m-[k]<r>at	lift, raise
	gjot	m-[k]at	lift
	khjejH	[k]ʰ<r>at-s	lift up one’s clothes
	khjet	[k]ʰ<r>at	lift
	kjot	[k]at	lift
Zhengzhang		kʰrads
		ked
		kʰrad
		ɡrad
		kad
		ɡad

說文解字

高舉也。从手曷聲。

Sources

Readings & variants: Unicode
Historical pronunciations: Baxter-Sagart Zhengzhang Shangfang
Historical images: Academia Sinica
Etymology: Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字)

mì secret, mysterious

Phonosemantic compound. 礻 represents the meaning and 必 represents the sound. Originally written as 祕. The 礻 component was later corrupted to 禾.

Components

禾 Simplified component

hé grain stalk

Corruption of the 礻 component in the original character 祕.

必 Sound component

bì surely

Historical Pronunciations

	Old Chinese
Zhengzhang	mpriɡs

Sources

Character origin: 李学勤《字源》p.6
Readings & variants: Unicode
Historical pronunciations: Zhengzhang Shangfang