About
The character "厝" is structurally composed of the radical 厂, depicting a cliff, and the phonetic component 昔. Its original meaning was "grindstone" or "stone slab", which semantically extended to mean "to place" or "to lay", as in setting something in position. This verbal sense of placing later developed into a nominal meaning in certain Chinese dialects, particularly those of Min-speaking regions, where it came to signify a house or dwelling, a usage derived from the concept of a placed or established structure.
Etymology Hide
