<p>Same with the word 后. It is the simplified word of 後（back). But the word Queen in Chinese is 后(simplified and traditional).</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-11-29T00:41:13.610Z
2023-11-29T00:41:13.610Z
Abc
<p>Came across the character 发 (fā/fà; issue, dispatch, send out / hair) recently and I checked their traditional forms 發 and 髮.</p>
<p>I wanted to know more about how 發 (fā; issue, dispatch, send out, emit [<strong>Zhengzhang OC</strong>: /*pad/]) got abbrivated into 发, so when I went to go check this character's entry on the Outlier Linguistics Dictionary of Chinese Characters, it told me that 发 was formed with 癶 (two feet; here used as sound component [<strong>Zhengzhang OC</strong>: /*paːd/]), 弓 (bow) and 几 (from 殳, which is used here to depict a weapon or a tool) being abbreviated into strokes 1-2 and 5 of 发 while 又 (hand) retained the same as it was from it's traditional form 發.</p>
<p>However when I was curious about how it gained the other meaning &quot;hair&quot; and how it was abbrivated, I don't think the Outlier Linguistics Dictionary mentioned on how 发 also got the meaning &quot;hair&quot; from 髮 (fà; hair [<strong>Zhengzhang OC</strong>: /*pod/]) since it was super vague on it and only listed it under &quot;fà&quot; as &quot;phoentic loan&quot;.</p>
<p>I tried my best making some proposals on how 发 could've came from 髮 as shown below:
<a href="https://i.sstatic.net/eUHB3.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/eUHB3.png" alt="pp" /></a></p>
<p>On the left, I proposed that 发 likely comes from the sound component below (犮; <strong>Zhengzhang OC</strong>: /*boːd/) of 髮 and I'm assuming 髟 was omitted for the simplified form while on the right, I also proposed that the first half of the first stroke and the last stroke of 发 may have been an abbreviation of 髟. I could not come to a conclusion on what's most possible however.</p>
<p>I know for a fact that 发 when it means &quot;hair&quot; possibly comes from the cursive script of 髮 but I'm not too sure myself if the cursive script of 髮 happened to be the same as 發 also in cursive script.</p>
<p>If I could get some clarification here, how did this newly made simplified form 发 at the time came to be used for both 發 and 髮? Did both of these characters in cursive script just coincidentally happened to look the same at the time? I'm definitely curious to find out about this.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-11-27T06:40:38.840Z
"Phonetic loan" means using a character (here 發 -> 发) for its sound value to represent a word (**/\*pod/**, *hair*) that had nothing to do with the character's meaning, only its sound. Outlier suggesting that 发 is a phonetic loan for **/\*pod/** implies that the character 发 is not connected in any way to the character 髮. (That wouldn't be my first guess though, I thought 发 was an abbreviation of 髮 rather than 發, but I don't really look at or care for Simplified Chinese).
dROOOze
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-11-27T06:49:58.803Z
Well if this is the case then, I'm assuming that once 发 was officially the simplified form of 發, 髮 was probably thrown in later into 发 because I'm assuming that the writers didn't want to keep too many traditional characters into simplified characters, so they might've clumped it together with a similar sounding traditional character into a singular simplified character. Still though, this concept of clumping together two characters into a single simplified form kind of confuses me a bit.
prismcool
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-11-27T06:52:12.817Z
Oh, it's done in the PRC standard quite a bit, Wikipedia has a whole article dedicated to this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiguities_in_Chinese_character_simplification
dROOOze
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-11-27T07:00:02.610Z
That's pretty interesting. Didn't knew 几, 后, 表 and 卜 also followed this exact simplification pattern. I always thought that the traditional forms got their simplified forms because of omitting or simplifying components haha
prismcool
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-11-27T07:01:49.073Z
I guess this is the first simplified character in this case that I've come across to represent two traditional characters.
prismcool
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-11-27T07:05:23.770Z
The PRC's character standard (standard = requires a process of standardisation) consists of both (1) stroke-reduction ("simplification") and (2) other changes. Here, When you see  几, 后, and 卜, they're considered "other changes" (merging two characters into one); the other character(s) that were merged weren't "Simplified", they just ceased to exist in the standard. That Wikipedia article has the word "Simplification" in it, but that's a bit of a gloss. The ROC (Taiwan) standard, for example, merged 著 and 着 into 著 (which PRC didn't do), but you wouldn't call that "Simplification".
dROOOze
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-11-27T07:12:36.887Z
Not really for that case, it's more of "add a character into an already existing one to reduce creating more simplified characters" situation if anything. Which is why I think 几 got repurposed to mean "how many" and 厂 was also repurposed to mean "factory".
prismcool
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-11-27T07:17:48.680Z
几 still means "table" in the PRC standard (e.g. in the word 茶几). This character wasn't repurposed, they just removed 幾 and merged its definitions into 几. For 厂, well, if you ever needed to express the word [hǎn](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%8E%82#Etymology_2) in writing, you have no choice but to use the character 厂; this is true of any other "repurposed" characters.
dROOOze
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-11-27T07:24:46.293Z
Ahhh, that makes a lot of sense now. Then I guess I'm just thinking about the most most common definitions of 几 and 厂 following the PRC standard. So then the majority of a few characters used for simplified forms still have their original meanings but is overshadowed by the traditional character's definition if that's what I'm thinking of.
prismcool
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-11-29T19:35:16.470Z
For one thing, 发 is not a newly made character. It is actually a 草书 form of 發 and the earliest of this shape dates back to about 2000 years ago in Han dynasty. It's common to use a 草书 form to simplify the traditional character. And yes, for 髮 it's primarily a phonetic loan.
lilysirius
<characters><simplified-characters><traditional-characters><glyph-origin><traditional-vs-simplified>
How did 發 and 髮 got written as 发 in simplified form?
# How did 發 and 髮 got written as 发 in simplified form?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2023-11-27)

Came across the character 发 (fā/fà; issue, dispatch, send out / hair) recently and I checked their traditional forms 發 and 髮.

I wanted to know more about how 發 (fā; issue, dispatch, send out, emit [**Zhengzhang OC**: /\*pad/]) got abbrivated into 发, so when I went to go check this character's entry on the Outlier Linguistics Dictionary of Chinese Characters, it told me that 发 was formed with 癶 (two feet; here used as sound component [**Zhengzhang OC**: /\*paːd/]), 弓 (bow) and 几 (from 殳, which is used here to depict a weapon or a tool) being abbreviated into strokes 1-2 and 5 of 发 while 又 (hand) retained the same as it was from it's traditional form 發.

However when I was curious about how it gained the other meaning "hair" and how it was abbrivated, I don't think the Outlier Linguistics Dictionary mentioned on how 发 also got the meaning "hair" from 髮 (fà; hair [**Zhengzhang OC**: /\*pod/]) since it was super vague on it and only listed it under "fà" as "phoentic loan".

I tried my best making some proposals on how 发 could've came from 髮 as shown below:
[![pp](https://i.sstatic.net/eUHB3.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/eUHB3.png)

On the left, I proposed that 发 likely comes from the sound component below (犮; **Zhengzhang OC**: /\*boːd/) of 髮 and I'm assuming 髟 was omitted for the simplified form while on the right, I also proposed that the first half of the first stroke and the last stroke of 发 may have been an abbreviation of 髟. I could not come to a conclusion on what's most possible however.

I know for a fact that 发 when it means "hair" possibly comes from the cursive script of 髮 but I'm not too sure myself if the cursive script of 髮 happened to be the same as 發 also in cursive script.

If I could get some clarification here, how did this newly made simplified form 发 at the time came to be used for both 發 and 髮? Did both of these characters in cursive script just coincidentally happened to look the same at the time? I'm definitely curious to find out about this.

**Tags:** characters, simplified-characters, traditional-characters, glyph-origin, traditional-vs-simplified

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: "Phonetic loan" means using a character (here 發 -> 发) for its sound value to represent a word (**/\*pod/**, *hair*) that had nothing to do with the character's meaning, only its sound. Outlier suggesting that 发 is a phonetic loan for **/\*pod/** implies that the character 发 is not connected in any way to the character 髮. (That wouldn't be my first guess though, I thought 发 was an abbreviation of 髮 rather than 發, but I don't really look at or care for Simplified Chinese).  
> **username_0**: Well if this is the case then, I'm assuming that once 发 was officially the simplified form of 發, 髮 was probably thrown in later into 发 because I'm assuming that the writers didn't want to keep too many traditional characters into simplified characters, so they might've clumped it together with a similar sounding traditional character into a singular simplified character. Still though, this concept of clumping together two characters into a single simplified form kind of confuses me a bit.  
> **username_1**: Oh, it's done in the PRC standard quite a bit, Wikipedia has a whole article dedicated to this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiguities_in_Chinese_character_simplification  
> **username_0**: That's pretty interesting. Didn't knew 几, 后, 表 and 卜 also followed this exact simplification pattern. I always thought that the traditional forms got their simplified forms because of omitting or simplifying components haha  
> **username_0**: I guess this is the first simplified character in this case that I've come across to represent two traditional characters.  
> **username_1**: The PRC's character standard (standard = requires a process of standardisation) consists of both (1) stroke-reduction ("simplification") and (2) other changes. Here, When you see  几, 后, and 卜, they're considered "other changes" (merging two characters into one); the other character(s) that were merged weren't "Simplified", they just ceased to exist in the standard. That Wikipedia article has the word "Simplification" in it, but that's a bit of a gloss. The ROC (Taiwan) standard, for example, merged 著 and 着 into 著 (which PRC didn't do), but you wouldn't call that "Simplification".  
> **username_0**: Not really for that case, it's more of "add a character into an already existing one to reduce creating more simplified characters" situation if anything. Which is why I think 几 got repurposed to mean "how many" and 厂 was also repurposed to mean "factory".  
> **username_1**: 几 still means "table" in the PRC standard (e.g. in the word 茶几). This character wasn't repurposed, they just removed 幾 and merged its definitions into 几. For 厂, well, if you ever needed to express the word [hǎn](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%8E%82#Etymology_2) in writing, you have no choice but to use the character 厂; this is true of any other "repurposed" characters.  
> **username_0**: Ahhh, that makes a lot of sense now. Then I guess I'm just thinking about the most most common definitions of 几 and 厂 following the PRC standard. So then the majority of a few characters used for simplified forms still have their original meanings but is overshadowed by the traditional character's definition if that's what I'm thinking of.  
> **username_2**: For one thing, 发 is not a newly made character. It is actually a 草书 form of 發 and the earliest of this shape dates back to about 2000 years ago in Han dynasty. It's common to use a 草书 form to simplify the traditional character. And yes, for 髮 it's primarily a phonetic loan.  

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_3 on 2023-11-29. Score: 1

Same with the word 后. It is the simplified word of 後（back). But the word Queen in Chinese is 后(simplified and traditional).


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