药草 Origin — Dong Chinese Dictionary

yào medicine Simplified

Phonosemantic compound. 艹 represents the meaning and 约 represents the sound. Simplified form of 藥.

Components

艹 Meaning component

cao, cǎo grass

艹 is a component form of 艸.

约 Sound component

yuē agreement

Sources

Readings & variants: Unicode

cǎo grass

Phonosemantic compound. 艹 represents the meaning and 早 represents the sound.

Components

艹 Sound Meaning component

cao, cǎo grass

艹 is a component form of 艸.

早 Sound component

zǎo early

Character Evolution

Regular Modern

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Historical Pronunciations

	Middle Chinese	Old Chinese	Gloss
Baxter-Sagart	tshawX	[tsʰ]ˤuʔ	grass, plants
	tshawX	[tsʰ]ˤuʔ	rough, coarse

說文解字

草斗，櫟實也。一曰象斗子。从艸早聲。

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)

yào medicine Traditional

Phonosemantic compound. 艹 represents the meaning and 樂 represents the sound.

Components

艹 Meaning component

cao, cǎo grass

艹 is a component form of 艸.

樂 Sound component

lè, yuè happy, music

Change in sound

藥 and 樂 don't sound similar in modern Mandarin due to historical phonetic changes. They were more similar in Middle Chinese.
藥 yak
樂 lak

Character Evolution

Bronze form — Bronze Late Western Zhou ~800 BC

Regular Modern

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Historical Pronunciations

	Middle Chinese	Old Chinese	Gloss
Baxter-Sagart	yak	m-r[e]wk	medicinal plant

說文解字

《說文》：“藥，治病艸。从艸，樂聲。”

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)

药 yào medicine Simplified

Components

Sources

草 cǎo grass

Components

Character Evolution

Historical Pronunciations

說文解字

Sources

藥 yào medicine Traditional

Components

Character Evolution

Historical Pronunciations

說文解字

Sources

yào medicine Simplified

cǎo grass

yào medicine Traditional