学童 (xué tóng) — schoolchild | TongTong Chinese Dictionary

Definition

noun

schoolchild

Measure word · 个

学童。
Zhè xiē xué tóng měi tiān zǒu lù shàng xué.
These schoolchildren walk to school every day.
学童。
Xué xiào wèi xué tóng tí gōng le miǎn fèi wǔ cān.
The school provides free lunch for the schoolchildren.
。
Lǎo shī zhèng zài jiào xué tóng men xiě zì.
The teacher is teaching the schoolchildren to write.

Compound word

构词法gòucífǎ

偏正piānzhèngModifier + head

The first part narrows down the second: it says what kind of thing the head is.

学 refers to studying or school and 童 means child, so together they mean a schoolchild.

Characters in this word

Most characters — around four in five — are built this way: one part hints at the meaning, the other at the pronunciation.

This origin belongs to the traditional form 學; 学 is its simplified writing.

The traditional form 學 may have used 爻 and 六 for sound, with hands and a child added later; the simplified 学 is a shorthand.

Two or more meaningful parts placed together so that their meanings combine into a new one.

The form 童 comes from a pairing of 䇂 (a chisel) with 見 (a kneeling person with a huge eye), depicting a person having an eye gouged out.

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