Original meaning: city wall
In ancient scripts 丁 was written in two different ways: (1) depicting the walls of a city, which is now written as 圍, or (2) depicting a nail, which is now written as 釘.
Character Evolution
Component uses
Historical Pronunciations
| Middle Chinese | Old Chinese | Gloss | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baxter-Sagart | teng | tˤeŋ | 4th heavenly stem |
| teng | tˤeŋ | nail (n.) | |
| treang | tˤreŋ | sound of beating |
說文解字
《說文》：“丁，夏時萬物皆丁實。象形。丁承丙，象人心。”
Sources
- Character origin
- 季旭昇《說文新證》p. 962
- Readings & variants
- Unicode
- Historical pronunciations
- Baxter-Sagart
- Historical images
- Academia Sinica
- Etymology
- Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字)
Original meaning: roots
Depicts roots of a plant. Based on the original meaning "roots", now written as 荄. The current meaning is a phonetic loan.
Character Evolution
Component uses
Historical Pronunciations
| Middle Chinese | Old Chinese | Gloss | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baxter-Sagart | hojX | [g]ˤəʔ | 12th earthly branch |
說文解字
《說文》：“亥，荄也。十月微陽起，接盛陰。从，，古文上字，一人男，一人女也。从乙，象褢子咳咳之形。《春秋傳》曰：‘亥有二首六身’。 ，古文。亥為豕，與豕同。亥而生子，復從一起。”
Sources
- Character origin
- 季旭昇《說文新證》p.986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)