月

月 U+6708, 月 CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-6708 ← 朇 CJK Unified Ideographs 有 →

⺝ U+2E9D, ⺝ CJK RADICAL MOON ← ⺜ CJK Radicals Supplement ⺞ →

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月

Stroke order

Stroke order

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Radical 74 月

月 (Kangxi radical 74, 月+0, 4 strokes, cangjie input 月 (B), four-corner 7722₀, composition ⿵⺆𠄠)

1. Kangxi radical #74, ⽉.

Do not confuse 月 with ⺼, a form of 肉 (“flesh, meat”) when used as the left-hand radical of a character. ⺼ is used for parts of the body such as 背 (“back”) or 肝 (“liver”). These may be written identically as 月, but in careful use they are distinguished, with the inside of ⺼ being written with unattached diagonal strokes. This is particularly an issue in looking up characters by radical; compare the 月 index and 肉 index.

Older/orthodox forms such as the Kangxi dictionary forms may additionally distinguish components that are related to neither 月 nor 肉, such as e.g. 朋, 前 or 服 where the two horizontal strokes 一 would be written as two unattached dots 丶 instead. Also, the bottom part of 青(靑) components would be written as 円. The orthodox 月 and ⺼ components, while similar, would still be distinguished slightly: they both use horizontal strokes, but ⺼ connects them to the ⺆ shape on both sides, and 月 only connects them on the left side.

• Appendix:Chinese radical/月
• 仴, 𫥂, 𠯲, 𪢻, 𫰒, 岄, 抈, 㳉, 阴, 明, 枂, 㱚, 玥, 迌, 𤰾, 眀, 䄴, 䎳, 䑚, 蚏, 䚴, 𧲩, 𧵂, 跀, 𨊸(䢁), 鈅(钥), 䩗, 𩢋, 𩵺(𬶈), 刖, 閒(𫔮), 朤

• Kangxi Dictionary: page 504, character 19
• Dai Kanwa Jiten: character 14330
• Dae Jaweon: page 879, character 20
• Hanyu Da Zidian (first edition): volume 3, page 2041, character 1
• Unihan data for U+6708

• 月 on Wikidata.Wikidata

Wikipedia has articles on:

• 月 (Written Standard Chinese^?)
• goe̍h (Southern Min)

Historical forms of the character 月
Shang	Western Zhou	Warring States	Shuowen Jiezi (compiled in Han)	Liushutong (compiled in Ming)
Oracle bone script	Bronze inscriptions	Chu slip and silk script	Small seal script	Transcribed ancient scripts

Pictogram (象形) – pictographic representation of a crescent moon. Related to 夕 (xī) and interchangeable in the past, but both are unrelated to 多, in which it represents two pieces of meat stylized as 夕.

Unrelated to:

• 前, in which it represents a boat 舟 (歬 > 𠝣 > 𣦃 > 前);
• 朕, in which it represents a boat again (𦩎 > 𦨶 > 朕)
• 青, in which it represents cinnabar 丹 (𤯞 > 靑 > 青);
• 赢, in which it represents the elongated face of a kind of dragon, perhaps a Panlong;
• 祭 and 將, in which it represents sacrificed meat stylized as 𱼀;
• 然, in which it represents dog meat (肰).
• 肖 and 有, in which it represents just meat.

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-ŋʷ(j)a-t (“moon; star”), whence also Magar (gya hot, “moon”), Proto-Lolo-Burmese *mwatᴸ (“star; moon”) (whence Lahu məʔ-kə (“star”)), Drung gurmet (“star”) (Matisoff, 1980; LaPolla, 1987; STEDT).

Various alternative etymologies have also been proposed:

• Unger (1992) proposes cognation with Tibetan ངོ (ngo, “waxing and waning moon; half moon”) (as in མར་ངོ (mar ngo, “waning moon”) and ཡར་ངོ (yar ngo, “waxing moon”)), which Schuessler (2007) connects to Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-ŋow (“white; light colour”). However, Sagart (1999) points out that the Tibetan word may be analyzed as a derivative of Tibetan ངོ (ngo, “face”), which would mean the semantic connection between “moon” and “face” had to occur either independently in Chinese and Tibetan or in Proto-Sino-Tibetan; it also requires positing a suffix -t in Chinese.
• Pulleybank (1995a) proposes another etymology based on the glyph for 名 (míng) (reconstructed as *màŋʲ), which he analyses as a phono-semantic compound of phonetic 夕 (xī, “moon”) and semantic 口 (kǒu, “mouth”). He suggests that the phonetic component represents a lost word *màŋʲ (“moon”), and reconstructs 月 as *mŋʲ (consonantal frame of “moon”) + *-at (suffix) > *ŋʲʷat. However, there are more straightforward ways of explaining the glyph origin of 名 (míng) (see there), which would nullify the hypothesis of the lost word.
• Related to 越 (“to pass over; to cross over”) in some way.
  • Mei (1979) derives 月 from 越 (OC **gjot > *gwjat): **N-gjot > *ngwjat. Also in this proposed word family is 歲 (OC **s-gjots > *skwjadh, “year”). The semantics of this word family is centred around "to pass; to elapse". While Matisoff (1980) seems supportive of this word family, STEDT reconstructs Proto-Sino-Tibetan *grwat (“to travel; to go through”) for 越 and 歲 / 岁 (suì), separate from the root for 月.
  • Ferlus (2012) reconstructs the Old Chinese as *ŋ.wat and puts it in a word family formed from a Chinese root *wat, having a meaning of "circularity" or "circular boundary". This proposed word family includes 越 (OC *wat, “to cross over”), as in "to cross the enclosure of the village", and 外 (OC *ŋ.wat-s, “outside”), as in "out of the enclosure of the village".

月

1. (literary or dialectal) moon (Classifier: 輪／轮 m)
2. moon-shaped; round like a moon

   月琴  ―  yuèqín  ―  yueqin, moon zither

3. (literary) moonlight
4. (Cantonese, in compounds) Short for 月餅／月饼 (“mooncake”).

   雙黃蓮蓉月／双黄莲蓉月 [Cantonese]  ―  soeng¹ wong^4-2 lin⁴ jung⁴ jyut^6-2   ―  lotus seed paste mooncake with two yolks

5. month (Classifier: 個／个 m c; 隻／只 h)

   Synonyms: 月份 (yuèfèn), 號頭 / 号头 (⁶ghau-deu) (Wu)

6. monthly

   月薪  ―  yuèxīn  ―  monthly wage

7. Classifier for months.
8. a surname

For quotations using this term, see Citations:月.