Wristwatch

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There is a discussion on Linguistics Stack Exchange whether wristwatch in Chinese came from the French:

As a native French speaker studying Mandarin Chinese, I couldn't help but notice that the Chinese term for wristwatch, 手表 (hand-show), is quite similar to the French term "une montre" (a "shower"/display). After further inspection, I notice that other European languages' term are quite different. All of Spanish, Portuguese and German have a term that translates roughly to "arm clock" and English it's "watch".

Is the term 手表 actually originated from French or is it a pure coincidence? Was it French who introduced wristwatches to China, and if so, why France and not Chinese colonizers such as the United Kingdom or Portugal?

I think not (from French).  A good part of the answer is to be found in this response to the original question:

biǎo is short for 钟表 zhōngbiǎo ‘watch’, where the first character more unambiguously means ‘clock, bell’ (those two are the same words in several European languages as well). I don’t know whether the use of this particular character/word to refer to watches was influenced by European languages, but it’s also used for various other instruments that show or display things: 水表 shuǐbiǎo ‘water meter’, 温度表/体温表 wēndùbiǎo/tǐwēnbiǎo ‘thermometer’, 仪表 yíbiǎo ‘instrument, gauge’, so it’s quite a logical word to use even without any Western influence.

It would be still clearer if the respondent had pointed out that biǎo 表 ("watch; gauge; meter; dial") in the expression shǒubiǎo 手表 ("wrist watch") is the simplified variant of biǎo 錶, i.e., shǒubiǎo 手錶.  Note that the full version of the character has the "metal" signific / radical / classifier on the left, indicating the material it is made of.

An alternative Chinese name for "wristwatch" in Chinese is wànbiǎo 腕錶, where wàn 腕 literally means "wrist".

And how did the English word "watch" come to be applied to small timepieces that one wore on one's wrist or carried in a pocket?

Watches evolved from portable spring-driven clocks, which first appeared in 15th-century Europe. The first timepieces to be worn, made in the 16th century beginning in the German cities of Nuremberg and Augsburg, were transitional in size between clocks and watches. Nuremberg clockmaker Peter Henlein (or Henle or Hele) (1485–1542) is often credited as the inventor of the watch. However, other German clockmakers were creating miniature timepieces during this period, and there is no evidence Henlein was the first.

Watches were not widely worn in pockets until the 17th century. One account suggests that the word "watch" came from the Old English word woecce – which meant "watchman" – because town watchmen used the technology to keep track of their shifts at work. Another says that the term came from 17th-century sailors, who used the new mechanisms to time the length of their shipboard watches (duty shifts).

(Wikipedia)

Wristwatches came to China from Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries.

 

Selected readings

"Homophonic puns in Standard Chinese" (Wikipedia) — Dàibiǎo戴表; dàibiǎo "watch" (n., as in "wristwatch") for 代表; dàibiǎo "represent" referring to the "Three Represents", a political ideology.

"Language, Script, and Art in East Asia and Beyond: Past and Present" (free pdf), Sino-Platonic Papers, 283 (December, 2018), 223 (of vi, 243 pages)– "Shanghai wristwatch"

 

[h.t. KeithB]



4 Comments »

  1. Jonathan Smith said,

    November 9, 2024 @ 5:05 pm

    As that answer notes, biao3 表 means among other things a gauge or display — this is very old, even if maybe ultimately 'to display/show (on the surface) (v.)' is primary and 'surface, exposed portion (n.)' is a (zero?) derivation. So nothing to do with French. Much later "錶" was made up for (I guess) 'wristwatch' in particular.

  2. unekdoud said,

    November 10, 2024 @ 9:04 am

    You'd think a gauge that shows the time would be a 時間表 but nope, that's a timetable.

  3. Terry K. said,

    November 11, 2024 @ 12:11 pm

    This is a sidenote, but the Spanish term for wristwatch, reloj de pulsera, means bracelet clock. No reference at all to arms.

  4. Michael Watts said,

    November 19, 2024 @ 5:23 am

    Considering that a bracelet is, by definition, worn on the arm, I'm inclined to agree that "bracelet clock" "translates roughly to 'arm clock'."

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