Translingual

Han character

騎 (radical 187 馬+8, 18 strokes, cangjie input 尸火大一口 (SFKMR), four-corner 7432₁, composition ⿰馬奇)

Descendants

• 骑

References

• KangXi: page 1440, character 36
• Dai Kanwa Jiten: character 44817
• Dae Jaweon: page 1964, character 31
• Hanyu Da Zidian: volume 7, page 4560, character 8
• Unihan data for U+9A0E

Chinese

Glyph origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲, OC *ɡral, *ɡrals) : semantic 馬 ‎(“horse”) + phonetic 奇 ‎(OC *kral, *ɡral) – to ride horseback

Etymology

Wanderwort in the E/SE Asian Sprachbund. The STEDT reconstructs Proto-Sino-Tibetan *gi ‎(“to ride; to sit astride; to sit (horse)”), and comments that "many of the TB forms seem to be borrowings from Chinese 騎".

Outside Sino-Tibetan, cognates are also found in Hmong-Mien, Tai-Kadai and some Mon-Khmer languages. Benedict (1975) surmises that this is an ancient loan into Proto-Sino-Tibetan from Austro-Tai:

... but these [Tibeto-Burman] forms appear to involve old loans from AT [Austro-Tai] with typical loss of an original medial *w (Thai *khwi ~ *gwi).

while Peiros (1998), Sagart (2006), Schuessler (2007) and Pittayaporn (2014) think the directionality of borrowing is reversed. The following excerpt is taken from Sagart's review (2006) of Matisoff's book Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman (2003):

The collection of forms under Matisoff's high-vowelled *gyi 'ride' are from TB languages in contact with Chinese (Lolo-Burmese, Qiangic, Tujia): they are best regarded as late loans from Chinese. ... The idea that the Chinese vocabulary of agriculture, metallurgy, horse-riding etc. might contain numerous loans from an early SEA language is simply not to be taken seriously in view of modern Asian archaeology (Bellwood 1997), quite apart from the fact that it makes no linguistic sense (Sagart 1999 for metal names). Yet Matisoff's book is scattered with observations telling the reader that words like 'writing brush' and 'ride' just discussed may well be loans from Austro-Tai into ST (188; 504).

Below lists some cognates for "to ride" found in various languages in this Sprachbund.

• Lolo-Burmese: *gyi ⪤ dzyi: Burmese စီး ‎(ci:), Sichuan Yi ꋩ ‎(zzy, “to ride; to bear (a rider)”), ꊪ ‎(zy, “to cause to ride”)
• Southwestern Tai: *kʰwiːᴮ: Thai ขี่ ‎(kìi), Lao ຂີ່ ‎(khī), Zhuang gwih
• Hmong-Mien: *ɟej: White Hmong caij
• Mon-Khmer: West Bahnaric *ɟih, Khmer ជិះ, Vietnamese cưỡi

Also compare Proto-Austronesian *sakay ‎(“catch a ride, join a group, ride on something”).

Pronunciation 1

Definitions

騎

1. to ride (a horse, bike, etc.)
2. to sit astride
3. (vulgar) to ride; to mount (someone in sex)

Pronunciation 2

Definitions

騎

1. horse or vehicle that one rides on
2. mounted soldier
3. (literary) Classifier for soldiers or warhorses.
4. A surname​.

Compounds

Japanese

Kanji

(common “Jōyō” kanji)

1. ride horseback
2. mount
3. cavalry

Readings

• Goon: ぎ (gi)
• Kan’on: き (ki)
• Kun: のる (noru)

Compounds

• 騎士 (きし, kishi)

Korean

Hanja

騎 • ‎(gi) (hangeul 기, revised gi, McCune-Reischauer ki, Yale ki)

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

Vietnamese

Han character

騎 (kị, cưỡi, kỵ, cỡi, siệu)

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