便
biànpián HSK2

convenience

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approved by cochleoid · Jun 14, 2022, 10:31 PM · Reviewed by cochleoid on Jun 14, 2022, 10:31 PM

Replaced the Shuowen paraphrase with how it isn't related to 更 (change). Both the sound and meaning come from an old form of 鞭 (whip)

Changed fields: hint, originalMeaning, components, customSources

Original meaning: whipping a person

From 亻 (person) and 𠓥 (whip). Original meaning related to whipping people, now written 鞭 (whip). Other meanings are phonetic loans.

Components

亻
亻 Meaning component

亻 is a component form of 人.

Change in meaning
亻 hints at the original meaning of 便, "whipping a person", which is no longer the most common meaning of 便 in modern Mandarin.
𠓥
𠓥 SoundMeaning component

This is the only character where the form of 更 (more) is used for 𠓥 (whip).

Change in meaning
𠓥 hints at the original meaning of 便, "whipping a person", which is no longer the most common meaning of 便 in modern Mandarin.
Change in form
Due to historical stylistic changes, this component is less similar to 𠓥 than it was in ancient scripts.

Character Evolution

Bronze form
Bronze Late Western Zhou ~800 BC
Seal form
Seal Western Han 202 BC-9 AD
Seal form
Seal Shuowen ~100 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Qin 221-206 BC
Clerical form
Clerical Western Han 202 BC-9 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Western Han 202 BC-9 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Eastern Han 25-220 AD
Regular Modern

Historical Pronunciations

Middle ChineseOld ChineseGloss
Baxter-SagartbjienH[b]e[n]-s comfortable; advantageous
bjien[b]e[n] glib-tongued

說文解字

《說文》：“便，安也。人有不便，更之。从人、更。”

Sources

Character origin
漢語多功能字庫李学勤 《字源》 p.711The Outlier Linguistics Dictionary of Chinese Characters
Readings & variants
Unicode
Historical pronunciations
Baxter-Sagart
Historical images
Academia Sinica
Etymology
Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字)