月

Meanings

Etymology

Pictogram (象形) – pictographic representation of a crescent moon. Related to 夕 (xī) and interchangeable in the past, but both are unrelated to 多, in which it represents two pieces of meat stylized as 夕. Unrelated to: * 前, in which it represents a boat 舟 (歬 > 𠝣 > 𣦃 > 前); * 朕, in which it represents a boat again (𦩎 > 𦨶 > 朕) * 青, in which it represents cinnabar 丹 (𤯞 > 靑 > 青); * 赢, in which it represents the elongated face of a kind of dragon, perhaps a Panlong; * 祭 and 將, in which it represents sacrificed meat stylized as 𱼀; * 然, in which it represents dog meat (肰). * 肖 and 有, in which it represents just meat. From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-ŋʷ(j)a-t (“moon; star”), whence also Magar [script needed] (gya hot, “moon”), Proto-Lolo-Burmese *mwatᴸ (“star; moon”) (whence Lahu məʔ-kə (“star”)), Drung gurmet (“star”) (Matisoff, 1980; LaPolla, 1987; STEDT). Various alternative etymologies have also been proposed: * Unger (1992) proposes cognation with Tibetan ངོ (ngo, “waxing and waning moon; half moon”) (as in མར་ངོ (mar ngo, “waning moon”) and ཡར་ངོ (yar ngo, “waxing moon”)), which Schuessler (2007) connects to Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-ŋow (“white; light colour”). However, Sagart (1999) points out that the Tibetan word may be analyzed as a derivative of Tibetan ངོ (ngo, “face”), which would mean the semantic connection between “moon” and “face” had to occur either independently in Chinese and Tibetan or in Proto-Sino-Tibetan; it also requires positing a suffix -t in Chinese. * Pulleybank (1995a) proposes another etymology based on the glyph for 名 (míng) (reconstructed as *màŋʲ), which he analyses as a phono-semantic compound of phonetic 夕 (xī, “moon”) and semantic 口 (kǒu, “mouth”). He suggests that the phonetic component represents a lost word *màŋʲ (“moon”), and reconstructs 月 as *mŋʲ (consonantal frame of “moon”) + *-at (suffix) > *ŋʲʷat. However, there are more straightforward ways of explaining the glyph origin of 名 (míng) (see there), which would nullify the hypothesis of the lost word. * Related to 越 (“to pass over; to cross over”) in some way. ** Mei (1979) derives 月 from 越 (OC **gjot > *gwjat): **N-gjot > *ngwjat. Also in this proposed word family is 歲 (OC **s-gjots > *skwjadh, “year”). The semantics of this word family is centred around "to pass; to elapse". While Matisoff (1980) seems supportive of this word family, STEDT reconstructs Proto-Tibeto-Burman *grwat (“to travel; to go through”) for 越 and 歲 /岁 (suì), separate from the root for 月. ** Ferlus (2012) reconstructs the Old Chinese as *ŋ.wat and puts it in a word family formed from a Chinese root *wat, having a meaning of "circularity" or "circular boundary". This proposed word family includes 越 (OC *wat, “to cross over”), as in "to cross the enclosure of the village", and 外 (OC *ŋ.wat-s, “outside”), as in "out of the enclosure of the village".

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Stroke order

Components

Components from cjk-decomp · MIT

Example sentences

• 它花了几个月。

  It took months.

• 那是一個月前了。

  That was a month ago.

• 上個月我感冒了。

  I caught a cold last month.

• 一年有十二個月。

  A year has twelve months.

• 我怀孕四个月了。

  I'm four months pregnant.

• 一年有十二個月。

  One year has twelve months.

Sentences from Tatoeba · CC-BY 2.0 FR

More examples & usage (AI)

Synonyms

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Derived terms

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Related words