匹敌 Origin — Chinese Character Wiki

pǐ bolt of cloth

Origin unclear. Possibly depicts a folded piece of cloth.

Character Evolution

Bronze form — Bronze Early Western Zhou ~1000 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	phjit	pʰi[t]	one of a pair

說文解字

《說文》：“匹，四丈也。从八、匸，八揲一匹，八亦聲。”

Sources

Character origin: 漢語多功能字庫古今文字集成
Readings & variants: Unicode
Historical pronunciations: Baxter-Sagart
Historical images: Academia Sinica
Etymology: Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字)

dí enemy Simplified

Simplified form of 敵. Phonosemantic compound. 攵 represents the meaning and 啻 represents the sound.

Components

舌 Simplified component

shé tongue

Shorthand for the 啻 component in the traditional character 敵.

攵 Meaning component

pū tap

攵 is a component form of 攴.

Sources

Readings & variants: Unicode

dí enemy Traditional

Phonosemantic compound. 攵 represents the meaning and 啻 represents the sound.

Components

啻 Sound component

chì, dì only

Change in sound

敵 and 啻 don't sound similar in modern Mandarin due to historical phonetic changes. They were more similar in Old Chinese.
敵 *[d]ˤek
啻 hljeɡs

攵 Meaning component

pū tap

攵 is a component form of 攴.

Character Evolution

Regular Modern

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Historical Pronunciations

	Middle Chinese	Old Chinese	Gloss
Baxter-Sagart	dek	[d]ˤek	oppose; enemy

說文解字

《說文》：“敵，仇也。从攴，啻聲。”

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)

匹 pǐ bolt of cloth

Character Evolution

Historical Pronunciations

說文解字

Sources

敌 dí enemy Simplified

Components

Sources

敵 dí enemy Traditional

Components

Character Evolution

Historical Pronunciations

說文解字

Sources

pǐ bolt of cloth

dí enemy Simplified

dí enemy Traditional