卵鞘
luǎn​qiào

ootheca

卵 luǎn egg

Original meaning: scrotum

Pictograph of the scrotum of a male's penis. The meaning later shifted to "egg", "ovum", and "spawn".

Character Evolution

Bronze form
Bronze Late Spring and Autumn ~500 BC
Seal form
Seal Warring States (Chu) 475-221 BC
Seal form
Seal Warring States (Chu) 475-221 BC
Seal form
Seal Warring States (Chu) 475-221 BC
Seal form
Seal Shuowen ~100 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Qin 221-206 BC
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

Component uses

Meaning (1)

孵

Historical Pronunciations

Middle ChineseOld ChineseGloss
Baxter-SagartlwaXk.rˤorʔ (dialect: *-r > *-j)egg
lwanXk.rˤorʔ egg

說文解字

《說文》：“卵，凡物無乳者卵生。象形。”

Sources

Character origin
季旭昇《說文新證》p.901-902
Readings & variants
Unicode
Historical pronunciations
Baxter-Sagart
Historical images
Academia Sinica
Etymology
Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字)

鞘 qiào, shāo scabbard

Phonosemantic compound. 革 represents the meaning and 肖 represents the sound.

Components

革
革 Meaning component
gé leather
肖
肖 Sound component
xiào look like

Character Evolution

Seal form
Seal Shuowen ~100 AD
Regular Modern

Historical Pronunciations

Middle ChineseOld Chinese
Zhengzhangsreːw
slewɢs
Unicodeshrau

說文解字

刀室也。从革肖聲。

Sources

Readings & variants
Unicode
Historical pronunciations
Zhengzhang Shangfang
Historical images
Academia Sinica
Etymology
Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字)