延

Glyph origin

Originally 㢟, an ideogrammic compound (會意／会意) : 彳 (“walking”) + 止 (“foot”) – "to travel far". The stroke at the top started being added as a distinguishing mark at the end of the Warring States period, as a way to distinguish its usage from 㢟 as an adverb to mean "prolonged", making it an Ideogram (指事) .^[1][2][3]

Shuowen Jiezi interprets it as phono-semantic compound (形聲／形声, OC *lan, *lans) : phonetic 丿 (OC *pʰleːd, *leds) + semantic 㢟.

Etymology

Within Chinese, cognate with 筵 (OC *lan, “bamboo mat”), 梴 (OC *l̥ʰan, “long (of wood)”) and 誕 (OC *l'aːnʔ, “wide; ludicrous”) (Schuessler, 2007). Cognate with Burmese လှန်း (hlan:, “to dry (things) in the sun”). Probably unrelated to Proto-Tibeto-Burman *jaːr (“spread; extend; sail”), whence Tibetan གཡོར་མོ (g.yor mo, “sail”), Mizo zâr (“to spread; to spread out”), Jingpho yàn (“spread; unrolled”).

Pan (1987) suggests Vietnamese lan (“to spread”) is borrowed from Old Chinese 延 (OC *lan, *lans).

Pronunciation

Definitions

延

1. to prolong
2. to stretch; to extend
3. to engage; to send for
4. to delay; to postpone; to defer
5. a surname

Compounds

Kanji

(Sixth grade kyōiku kanji)

Etymology

From Middle Chinese 延 (MC yen).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [ẽ̞ɴ]

Affix

延(えん) • (en) 

1. extend, lengthen
2. prolong
3. postpone

References

Hanja

延 (eumhun 늘일 연 (neuril yeon))

1. hanja form^? of 연 (“to stretch; to extend; to lengthen”)

Han character

延: Hán Nôm readings: diên

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