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biàn

Meanings

CC-CEDICT

biàn
  1. 1.to distinguish
  2. 2.to recognize

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Wiktionary

  1. 1.to distinguish; to discriminate
  2. 2.to prepare; to equip
  3. 3.to administer; to govern; to manage

Wiktionary · CC BY-SA

Etymology

From 辧, a phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *breːns, *brenʔ): phonetic 辡 (OC *prenʔ, *brenʔ) + semantic 刀 (“knife”). However, the phonetic component (the reduplication of the knife to mark prisoners) perhaps symbolizes two prisoners accusing each other, hence two different versions, which then leads to the concept of "discriminate". Cognate with 辯 (OC *brenʔ). 辨 (OC *brenʔ, “divide, distinguish, discriminate, dispute”) and its two exopassive derivatives 釆 (“Literally, “(to cause to be) divided” > discriminate, distinguish”) and 瓣 (OC *breːns, “Literally, “what is divided” > piece, section, segment”) belong to the same word-family, which may be related to either 班 (OC *praːn, “to distribute → to arrange, classify → class, group”) or Mizo pʰel (“to split, cut in halves”) (with medial *-r- dropped after labial initials according to Mizo phonotactics) (Schuessler, 2007).

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Stroke order

Components

Components from cjk-decomp · MIT

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Derived terms

Wiktionary · CC BY-SA

Related words