操作 Origin — Dong Chinese Dictionary

cāozuò HSK4

operate

cāo grasp, control

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

Components

扌 Meaning component

shou, shǒu hand

扌 is a component form of 手.

喿 Sound component

zào, sào, qiāo chirping of birds

Character Evolution

Regular Modern

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Historical Pronunciations

	Middle Chinese	Old Chinese	Gloss
Baxter-Sagart	tshawX	[tsʰ]ˤawʔ	grasp (v.)
	tshawH	[tsʰ]ˤawʔ-s	(what is grasped:) principles

說文解字

《說文》：“操，把持也。从手，喿聲。”

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)

zuò make

Phonosemantic compound. 亻 represents the meaning and 乍 represents the sound.

Components

亻 Meaning component

rén person

亻 is a component form of 人.

乍 Sound component

zhà, zuò suddenly

Change in sound

作 and 乍 don't sound similar in modern Mandarin due to historical phonetic changes. They were more similar in Old Chinese.
作 *[ts]ˤak-s
乍 *[dz]ˤrak-s

Character Evolution

Bronze form — Bronze Late Shang ~1100 BC

Regular Modern

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Component uses

Sound (1)

做

Meaning (1)

做

Historical Pronunciations

	Middle Chinese	Old Chinese	Gloss
Baxter-Sagart	tsak	[ts]ˤak	do, work
	tsuH	[ts]ˤak-s	do, work

說文解字

《說文》：“作，起也。从人，从乍。”

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)

操 cāo grasp, control

Components

Character Evolution

Historical Pronunciations

說文解字

Sources

作 zuò make

Components

Character Evolution

Component uses

Sound (1)

Meaning (1)

Historical Pronunciations

說文解字

Sources

cāo grasp, control

zuò make