的 Origin — Chinese Character Wiki

dedìdídī HSK1

[possessive]

Original meaning: bright

Originally written as 旳. Phonosemantic compound. 日 represents the meaning and 勺 represents the sound. Based on the original meaning "bright". The current meaning is a phonetic loan.

Components

日 Meaning component

rì sun

Change in meaning

日 hints at the original meaning of 的, "bright", which is no longer the most common meaning of 的 in modern Mandarin.

Change in form

Due to historical stylistic changes, this component is less similar to 日 than it was in ancient scripts.

勺 Sound component

sháo, shuò, zhuó spoon

Change in sound

的 and 勺 don't sound similar in modern Mandarin due to historical phonetic changes. They were more similar in Old Chinese.
的 *[t-l]ˤewk
勺 *m-tewk

Character Evolution

Clerical form — Clerical Eastern Han 25-220 AD

Regular Modern

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Historical Pronunciations

	Middle Chinese	Old Chinese	Gloss
Baxter-Sagart	tek	[t-l]ˤewk	bright; mark in a target

說文解字

《說文》：“旳，明也。从日，勺聲。《易》曰：‘為的顙。’”

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)