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shǔ

Meanings

CC-CEDICT

shǔ
  1. 1.broomcorn millet
  2. 2.glutinous millet

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Wiktionary

  1. 1.proso millet (Panicum miliaceum) (especially glutinous varieties, but also generic)
  2. 2.sorghum
  3. 3.corn; maize

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Etymology

Pictogram (象形). A cereal 禾 with water 水 or kernels under it. The water may symbolize the wine made from millet or the fact that millet is sticky and water-resistant; otherwise, given that millet is a resistant plant that can grow on dry ground, the "water" component remains unexplained. See 黎, in which the radical appears as a contracted form. Schuessler (2007) minimally reconstructs Old Chinese *nhaʔ, comparing it to Tibetan ནས་ (nas, “barley”). STEDT provisionally reconstructs Proto-Sino-Tibetan *nas (“highland barley”). However, Baxter and Sagart (2014) reconstruct Old Chinese *s-tʰaʔ based on aspirated affricate reflexes in certain Mandarin dialects, e.g. Hefei tʂʰu³, Yangzhou tsʰu³, as well as sound gloss evidence from Shuowen. This would make the comparison to Tibetan less plausible.

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Stroke order

Components

Components from cjk-decomp · MIT

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Synonyms

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Derived terms

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Related words