蠶

蠶 (Kangxi radical 142, 虫+18, 24 strokes, cangjie input 一山日中戈 (MUALI), four-corner 1113₆, composition ⿱朁䖵)

• 𨽳 𧖛 𥸢

• Kangxi Dictionary: page 1103, character 33
• Dai Kanwa Jiten: character 33890
• Dae Jaweon: page 1566, character 34
• Hanyu Da Zidian (first edition): volume 4, page 2908, character 11
• Unihan data for U+8836

Historical forms of the character 蠶
Shuowen Jiezi (compiled in Han)	Liushutong (compiled in Ming)
Small seal script	Transcribed ancient scripts

Possibly related to Tibetan སྡོམ (sdom, “spider”), which is likely related to Tibetan སྡོམ (sdom, “to bind; to tie”), 蔪 (OC *zamʔ, “to entwine”) (Bodman, 1980; Coblin, 1986). The silkworm, as the spider, would thus be seen as a "binder; spinner". Compare the semantic development of English spider, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *spinnaną (“to spin”).

These may be derived from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *tip ~ *tu(p/m) (“to wrap up”), whence also གཏུམ (gtum, “to wrap up”), Burmese ထုပ် (htup, “to wrap, bundle”); other Chinese comparanda include 縶 (OC *tib, “to rope, tether, bind”), and 纏 (OC *dan, *dans, “to bind”) (STEDT).

蠶

1. silkworm

(Hyōgai kanji, kyūjitai kanji, shinjitai form 蚕)

1. This term needs a translation to English. Please help out and add a translation, then remove the text {{rfdef}}.

• Go-on: ぞん (zon)^{←ぞん (zon, historical)←ぞむ (zomu, ancient)}
• Kan-on: さん (san)^{←さん (san, historical)←さむ (samu, ancient)}
• Kun: かいこ (kaiko, 蠶)

蠶 (eumhun 누에 잠 (nue jam))

1. silkworm

蠶: Hán Nôm readings: tàm, tằm

1. This term needs a translation to English. Please help out and add a translation, then remove the text {{rfdef}}.