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shé

Meanings

CC-CEDICT

shé
  1. 1.tongue
  1. 1.used in 喇舌[lǎ jī] to transcribe the Taiwanese word for "tongue"

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Wiktionary

  1. 1.tongue
  2. 2.tongue-shaped object
  3. 3.clapper of a bell
  4. 4.speech; speaking (used in certain expressions)
  5. 5.a surname

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Etymology

Pictogram (象形) – a snake's tongue emerging upwards from a mouth (口). Evolution: * Oracle bone script: Originally a mouth + a forked snake tongue. Later variants added a horizontal stroke at the base to indicate location, which often evolved into a second fork (double-forked). * Bronze script (Late Shang / Early Western Zhou): Standardized with four dots symmetrically placed between the double forks and the mouth. * Later: The dots disappeared, simplifying into the modern form. Compare 舌 (OC *m-lat) and 蛇 (OC *m-laj, “snake”). See also 言, 音 and 告. Unrelated to 舍, in which it represents a hut. From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s/m-l(j)a-t (“tongue”); compare Western Magar मेलेट (melet, “tongue”), Jingpho shinglet (“tongue”) (STEDT; Schuessler, 2009). The reconstruction of a complex initial *m(ə)-l- in Old Chinese is based on evidence from the softened initial in Proto-Min as well as Proto-Hmong-Mien *mblet (“tongue”) (Schuessler, 2007; Baxter and Sagart, 2014). Alternatively, Schuessler (2007), reconstructing the Old Chinese minimally as *m-lat, derives it from 舐 (OC *m-leʔ, “to lick”) + *-t (“nominal suffix for natural objects”), literally “licker”.

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Stroke order

Components

Components from cjk-decomp · MIT

More examples & usage (AI)

Synonyms

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Derived terms

Wiktionary · CC BY-SA

Related words