蛇形 Origin — Chinese Character Wiki

shéxíng

coiled

shé snake

Phonosemantic compound. 虫 represents the meaning and 它 represents the sound. Originally written as 它.

Components

虫 Meaning component

chóng bug, insect

它 Sound Iconic component

tā it

Pictograph of a snake.

Change in sound

蛇 and 它 don't sound similar in modern Mandarin due to historical phonetic changes. They were more similar in Old Chinese.
蛇 *laj
它 *l̥ˤaj

Character Evolution

Bronze form — Bronze Early Western Zhou ~1000 BC

Seal form — Seal Warring States (Chu) 475-221 BC

Regular Modern

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Historical Pronunciations

	Middle Chinese	Old Chinese	Gloss
Baxter-Sagart	zyae	Cə.lAj	snake
	ye	laj	委蛇 compliant, complacent

說文解字

《說文》：“它，虫也。从虫而長，象冤曲垂尾形。上古艸居患它，故相問無它乎。蛇，它或从虫。”

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)

xíng, xing form, shape

Phonosemantic compound. 彡 represents the meaning and 井 represents the sound.

Components

井 Sound component

jǐng well

Change in form

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

彡 Meaning component

shān, xiǎn hair

Three lines depicting a shape

Character Evolution

Regular Modern

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Historical Pronunciations

	Middle Chinese	Old Chinese	Gloss
Baxter-Sagart	heng	[ɢ]ˤeŋ	form, shape

說文解字

《說文》：“形，象形也。从彡，幵聲。”

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)

蛇 shé snake

Components

Character Evolution

Historical Pronunciations

說文解字

Sources

形 xíng, xing form, shape

Components

Character Evolution

Historical Pronunciations

說文解字

Sources

shé snake

xíng, xing form, shape