Character: 薄
Modern (Beijing) reading: bó
Preclassic Old Chinese: bāk
Classic Old Chinese: bāk
Western Han Chinese: bāk
Eastern Han Chinese: bāk
Early Postclassic Chinese: bāk
Middle Postclassic Chinese: bāk
Late Postclassic Chinese: bāk
Middle Chinese: bâk
English meaning : be thin
Russian meaning[s]: 1) тонкий; жидкий; слабый; 2) ничтожный, недостойный; вежл. мой; 3) незадачливый, несчастный (о судьбе); 4) худосочный, тощий (о земле); 5) пресный, безвкусный; 6) бесчувственный, равнодушный; 7) презрительно; невнимательно; 8) близиться к...; близко к...; 9) покрывать; 10) занавеска; 11) густой (о траве); 12) Бао (фамилия)
Shuowen gloss: 林薄也.一曰蠶薄.從草.溥聲. [41]
Comments: Pek. has a colloquial reading báo and a more standard one: bó. Also means 'to press, press on, suppress' (probably a semantic derivate: 'to make thin'). For initial *b- cf. Min forms: Xiamen, Chaozhou poʔ8, Fuzhou pok8, Jianou pɔ8.
The character is also used for a homonymous word *bāk, which Sch. defines as follows: "meaning much debated; perhaps a -k derivation (distributive) from the stem *ba 夫 'that', hence 'of all places, that one': there".
A usage due to phonetic similarity is witnessed in the reduplication 薄薄 MC phâk-phâk, OC *phāk-phāk 'to go or sound phak-phak'.
Radical: 140
Four-angle index: 3198
Karlgren code: 0771 p
Jianchuan Bai: po2
Dali Bai: po2
Bijiang Bai: po2
Shijing occurrences: 2.3, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 13.3, 26.2, 35.2
