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zǎo
HSK 1freq #445

Meanings

CC-CEDICT

zǎo
  1. 1.early
  2. 2.morning
  3. 3.Good morning!
  4. 4.long ago
  5. 5.prematurely

CC-CEDICT · CC BY-SA

Wiktionary

  1. 1.early; in advance; soon
  2. 2.long ago; for a long time
  3. 3.morning
  4. 4.good morning
  5. 5.before; in the past time
  6. 6.breakfast
  7. 7.a surname

Wiktionary · CC BY-SA

Etymology

Early bronze inscriptions: Pictogram (象形) – acorn. Original form of 皂 (OC *zuːʔ) through an intermediate variant 皁 (once also written as 草 (cǎo)). Borrowed phonetically for "morning" sense. Late bronze inscriptions: Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *ʔsuːʔ): semantic 日 (“sun”) + phonetic 棗 (OC *ʔsuːʔ), with 棗 sometimes simplified as 朿. Small seal script: Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 日 (“sun”) + 甲 (“first”) – when the sun first rises. However, Xu Shen's interpretation is not based on oracle bones and bronzes inscriptions. In some ancient texts, 蚤 (OC *ʔsuːʔ) was often used instead. Unrelated to the ancient version of 是: in this character, it doesn't represent an acorn but a spoon. Possible cognate found in Proto-Hmong-Mien *ntsi̯ouˣ (“early”), whence White Hmong ntxov and Iu Mien nziou (Baxter and Sagart, 2014; Schuessler, 2007), and Proto-Tai *ɟaːwꟲ (“early morning”), whence Thai เช้า (cháao) and Lü ᦋᧁᧉ (tsaw²). Note also similarities to Burmese စော (cau:, “early”).

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Stroke order

Components

Components from cjk-decomp · MIT

Example sentences

Sentences from Tatoeba · CC-BY 2.0 FR

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Synonyms

Antonyms

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Derived terms

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Related words