How did “leg-brace” come to mean “school”? 校

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Nov 08 • 146 read

When learning Chinese characters using radicals, this character 校 always seem to puzzle me. I've always known 校 to be school, but the "wood" radical never made any sense to me. What does wood or tree have to do with school? Why not use a radical that is related to buildings (广 or 宀) or even children (as in 学). My research on shuowen says that the original meaning was some sort of beam where prisoners' legs were shackled to. This to me makes sense even with the phonetic 交 representing a prisoner shackled to a leg brace with his legs crossed. My question is when, and how did 校 suddenly come to mean "school"?

Answer

校 was pronounced jiao instead of xiao in the beginning. It was a military term covering quite wide meaning: to inspect the troops; to practice drill; to compete military skills. The place to do so is always a big open field surrounded by high wood fence, hence radical of wood and the place is 校场。 Please note "学校" is not a Chinese concept at all ("学堂“ was used then as all classes are conducted indoor). It was introduced to China in late 19th century by westerners. The biggest difference is there is always a big field for the students to do various activities, and it looks exactly like 校场 with similar functions。 Not suitable to call it 学堂 anymore, so, call it "学校" emphasizing it's for education, not military. I am not sure, but I think the shifting of pronunciation happened around that time also.

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