短笛 Origin — Dong Chinese Dictionary

duǎndí

piccolo

duǎn short

Phonosemantic compound. 矢 represents the meaning and 豆 represents the sound.

Components

矢 Meaning component

shǐ arrow

豆 Sound component

dòu bean

Change in sound

短 and 豆 don't sound similar in modern Mandarin due to historical phonetic changes. They were more similar in Old Chinese.
短 *tˤorʔ
豆 *[N.t]ˤo-s

Character Evolution

Regular Modern

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Historical Pronunciations

	Middle Chinese	Old Chinese	Gloss
Baxter-Sagart	twanX	tˤorʔ	short

說文解字

《說文》：“短，有所長短，以矢為正。从矢，豆聲。”

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)

dí bamboo flute

A bamboo ⺮ flute 由

Components

⺮ Meaning component

zhú bamboo

由 Meaning component

yóu cause

Character Evolution

Regular Modern

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Historical Pronunciations

	Middle Chinese	Old Chinese	Gloss
Baxter-Sagart	dek	lˤiwk	flute
Zhengzhang		l'ɯːwɢ
Unicode	dhek

說文解字

七孔筩也。从竹由聲。羌笛三孔。

Sources

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

短 duǎn short

Components

Character Evolution

Historical Pronunciations

說文解字

Sources

笛 dí bamboo flute

Components

Character Evolution

Historical Pronunciations

說文解字

Sources

duǎn short

dí bamboo flute