河
Meanings
CC-CEDICT
- 1.river (CL:条[tiáo],道[dào])
- 2.(bound form) the Yellow River
- 3.(bound form) the Milky Way
- 4.(bound form) (on restaurant menus) rice noodles 河粉[hé fěn]
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Wiktionary
- 1.Yellow River, Huang He (a major river in northern China, passing through Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan and Shandong provinces as well as Ningxia and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Regions)
- 2.river, especially a smaller river. See usage note. (Classifier: 條／条 m c; 道 m)
- 3.streamside; riverside
- 4.Milky Way
- 5.a surname, He or Ho
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Etymology
* Oracle bone script: ** Shi group (thick strokes) / 師肥筆: Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *ɡaːl): semantic 水 (“water”) + phonetic 何 (OC *ɡaːl, *ɡaːlʔ). ** Variant: Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *ɡaːl): semantic 水 + phonetic 可 (OC *kʰaːlʔ) (phonetic drawn wavy like water; possibly original form of 歌 (gē), representing wavy sound). ** Corruption: Confused with 何 (hé) (水 (shuǐ) corrupted to 人 (rén); 可 (kě) corrupted to a shoulder burden, possibly original form of 柯 (kē)). ** He group / 何組: Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *ɡaːl): 水 + 何 (more pictographic). ** Huang group / 黃組: Compound of 欠 (qiàn) / 旡 (jì), a shoulder burden, and 水 (shuǐ). * Western Zhou bronze: Inherits Huang group structure; adds 口 (kǒu). * Possibly related to 何 (OC *gˤaj) (to bear). Originally particularly used for the Yellow River, with other rivers known as 水 (OC *qʰʷljilʔ). Later extended generally as a word for rivers in northern China but the influence of 江 (OC *kroːŋ, “Yangtze River; river in southern China”) has meant that modern usage tends to favor it for shorter rivers and creeks except in historical cases. Further etymology uncertain. Various hypotheses have been proposed: * Sino-Tibetan. Either: ** Cognate with Tibetan རྒལ (rgal, “to cross, to traverse”) (Coblin, 1986), or ** Derived from 湖 (OC *ɡaː, “lake”) (Matisoff, 1995), or ** that the Yellow River's name stems from the shape, which resembles an adze handle 柯 (OC *kaːl), of a stretch spanning 500 to 600 kilometers "from Héjīn, Tóngguān to east of Zhèngzhōu" (Takashima, 2012). * A Mongolic loan. Compare Proto-Mongolic *gowl (“river”) > Mongolian ᠭᠣᠣᠯ (ɣool, “river”) (Norman and Mei, 1976). This was argued against in Zhang (1998). ** Miyake (2017) surmises that Proto-Mongolic *gowl (“river”) and 河 (OC *[C.g]ˤaj < *[C.g]ˤal)), even if related, might have come from a third source language, e.g. Xiongnu. If so, compare also Proto-Yeniseian *xur₁ (“water”) in light of Xiongnu's speculated linguistic affinity with the Yeniseian languages.
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Stroke order
Components
Components from cjk-decomp · MIT
Example sentences
他遊過了河。
He swam across the river.
這是一條河嗎?
Is this a river?
我跳進了河裡。
I dove into the river.
我能游泳過河。
I can swim across the river.
我乘船过了河。
I crossed the river by boat.
我去河裡游泳。
I went swimming in the river.
Sentences from Tatoeba · CC-BY 2.0 FR
More examples & usage (AI)
Synonyms
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Derived terms
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA