渠

渠 (Kangxi radical 85, 水+9, 12 strokes, cangjie input 水尸木 (ESD), four-corner 3190₄, composition ⿱洰木)

• Kangxi Dictionary: page 633, character 48
• Dai Kanwa Jiten: character 17764
• Dae Jaweon: page 1040, character 7
• Hanyu Da Zidian (first edition): volume 3, page 1645, character 4
• Unihan data for U+6E20

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 / 形声, OC *ɡa): semantic 水 (“water”) + abbreviated phonetic 榘 (OC *kʷaʔ).

“ditch; canal; drain”

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *r-ka ~ *k(r)a (“path; way; channel; ditch”); probably the same word as 衢 (OC *ɡʷa, “passage”) (Schuessler, 2007). Cognate with Tibetan རྐ (rka, “gutter; channel; furrow”).

渠

1. ditch; canal; drain; man-made channel (Classifier: 條／条 m c)

   靈渠／灵渠  ―  Língqú  ―  Lingqu (a canal in present-day Xing'an County, Guangxi, China, constructed in 214 BCE)

   污水渠 [Cantonese]  ―  wu¹ seoi² keoi⁴ [Jyutping]  ―  sewer

2. (literary) big; huge
3. a surname

Unlike 溝／沟 (gōu), which refers to both artificial and natural watercourses, 渠 (qú) refers only to artificial watercourses.

Attested since 4th to 5th century CE, preserved in many central and southern dialects (Schuessler, 2007). See 佢 and 伊.

渠

1. (literary or dialectal) third-person pronoun; he; she; it

   • 畫工畫佛身光，有匾圓如扇者，身側則光亦側，此大謬也。渠但見雕木佛耳，不知此光常圓也。 [Literary Chinese, trad.]
     画工画佛身光，有匾圆如扇者，身侧则光亦侧，此大谬也。渠但见雕木佛耳，不知此光常圆也。 [Literary Chinese, simp.]

     From: c. 1088 CE, Shen Kuo, Dream Pool Essays

     Huàgōng huà fó shēnguāng, yǒu biǎnyuán rú shàn zhě, shēn cè zé guāng yì cè, cǐ dà miù yě. Qú dàn jiàn diāo mù fó ěr, bùzhī cǐ guāng cháng yuán yě. [Pinyin]

     When painters paint Buddha’s aureole, they make it flat and round like a fan. If his body is deflected, then the aureole is also deflected,―a serious blunder. Such a one is only thinking of Buddha as a graven image, and does not know that the roundness of his aureole is everlasting.

   • 問渠哪得清如許，為有源頭活水來。 [Classical Chinese, trad.]
     问渠哪得清如许，为有源头活水来。 [Classical Chinese, simp.]

     From: c. 12th century, 朱熹 (Zhu Xi), 觀書有感

     Wèn qú nǎ dé qīng rú xǔ, wèi yǒu yuántóu huóshuǐ lái. [Pinyin]

     [I want to] ask it [the pond] why it can be so clear. It is because running water continuously flows in.

   • 1997, 覃遠雄, 韋樹關, 卞成林, editors, 南寧平話詞典 [A Dictionary of Nanning Pinghua] (Great Dictionary of Modern Chinese Dialects), first edition, Nanjing: 江蘇教育出版社, page 41:

     渠是哪個？／渠是哪个？ [Nanning Pinghua]  ―  gy⁴ si⁶ na² go³ [Jyutping++]  ―  Who is he?

(Hyōgai kanji)

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• On (unclassified): きょ (kyo)
• Kun: みぞ (mizo, 渠)、かれ (kare, 渠)、なんぞ (nanzo, 渠ぞ)

• “^▲渠”, in 漢字ぺディア [Kanjipedia]‎^[1] (in Japanese), The Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation, 2015–2025

渠 (eum 거 (geo))

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渠: Hán Nôm readings: cừ, gừa, khờ, cự

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