降雪 Origin — Dong Chinese Dictionary

jiàngxuě

snowfall

jiàng, xiáng descend

Depicts two feet (夅) descending down a hill (阝).

Components

阝 Iconic component

fù hill, place

阝 is a component form of 阜. Depicts a hill.

夅 Sound Iconic component

jiàng, xiáng to descend

Depicts two feet walking down a hill.

Character Evolution

Bronze form — Bronze Mid Western Zhou ~900 BC

Seal form — Seal Warring States (Chu) 475-221 BC

Clerical form — Clerical Western Han 202 BC-9 AD

Regular Modern

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Historical Pronunciations

	Middle Chinese	Old Chinese	Gloss
Baxter-Sagart	kaewngH	kˤruŋ-s (? < *-[u]m-s)	descend
	haewng	m-kˤru[ŋ] (? < *-[u]m)	submit

說文解字

《說文》：“降，下也。从，夅聲。”

Sources

Character origin: 漢語多功能字庫張世超《金文形義通解》p.3353
Readings & variants: Unicode
Historical pronunciations: Baxter-Sagart
Historical images: Academia Sinica
Etymology: Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字)

xuě snow

Phonosemantic compound. 雨 represents the meaning and 彗 represents the sound.

Components

雨 Meaning component

yǔ rain

彗 Sound Remnant component

huì, suì broom

Change in sound

雪 and 彗 don't sound similar in modern Mandarin due to historical phonetic changes. They were more similar in Middle Chinese.
雪 sjwet
彗 zjwejH

Character Evolution

Regular Modern

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Component uses

Sound (0 of 2 verified)

鳕鱈

Historical Pronunciations

	Middle Chinese	Old Chinese	Gloss
Baxter-Sagart	sjwet	[s]ot	snow

說文解字

《說文》：“，凝雨說物者。”

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)

降 jiàng, xiáng descend

Components

Character Evolution

Historical Pronunciations

說文解字

Sources

雪 xuě snow

Components

Character Evolution

Component uses

Sound (0 of 2 verified)

Historical Pronunciations

說文解字

Sources

jiàng, xiáng descend

xuě snow