狸

Meanings

Etymology

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *rɯ): semantic 犬 (“dog”) + phonetic 里 (OC *rɯʔ). Originally an unorthodox variant (俗字) of the character 貍 (lí). Uncertain. Here some proposals: * Fangyan https://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=en&id=45515 and Guo Pu consider it to be one among many dialectal words for 貔 (OC *bi), which however is a different word (Schuessler, 2007) (see there). * Zhao & Huang (1998) (apud Schuessler, 2007) connects it to Hmongic pli ~ ple "cat". * Schuessler (2007) minimally reconstructs 貍 (OC *rə) from *pʰrə ~ *pʰə-rə and proposes possible Sino-Tibetan etymology and compares it to Mru pri (“a kind of leopard”) (see also Löffler, 1966); he also sees potential cognacy with Tibetan ཞི་མི (zhi mi), ཞིམ་བུ (zhim bu), ཞུམ་བུ (zhum bu) - all meaning "cat" - if those were from *ryi-mi; additionally, པི་ཤི (pi shi, “cat”) (< *zhi?) is possibly equivalent to Old Chinese dialectal forms with initial *pʰ- (e.g. 𧳏 (pī) < LHC *pʰiə < OC *pʰrə or 𧳏貍／𧳏狸 (pīlí)); in that case, the original Chinese word might have been a compound: 貔狸 "(large) cat and small cat"; even so, see 貔 (OC *bi) for possible Indic influence on Tibetan byi ~ pi (ibid.). * STEDT reconstructs Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-(l/r)e(y/ŋ) (“squirrel, weasel”) and proposes cognacy with 鼪 (OC *sreŋ, *sreŋs), Tibetan སྲེ་མོང (sre mong, “weasel”), Burmese ရှဉ့် (hrany., “squirrel”), etc.

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Stroke order

Components

Components from cjk-decomp · MIT

Example sentences

• 窮鼠囓狸。

  A cornered rat will bite a cat.

Sentences from Tatoeba · CC-BY 2.0 FR

More examples & usage (AI)

Derived terms

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Related words