Taxonomy of meanings for 僚:　　

  • 僚 liǎo (OC: ɡ-rewʔ MC: liɛu) 力小切 上 廣韻：【朋也又音平聲 】
  • 僚 liáo (OC: ɡ-reew MC: leu) 落蕭切 平 廣韻：【同僚 】
    • HUT
      • nsmall house, hut
    • WINDOW
      • nZHANG HENG, XIJINGFU: decorated window
  • 僚 liáo (OC: ɡ-reew MC: leu) 落蕭切 平 廣韻：【同官爲僚又姓左傳晉陽氏大夫僚安 】

    Additional information about 僚

    說文解字:

      Criteria
    • SLAVE

      1. The standard general word for a dependent low-status servant or slave is nú 奴, and this word became quite currrent in Han times.

      2. Yì 役 tends to focus on the hard labour involved.

      3. Lǔ 虜 focusses prototypically on the prisoner-origins of a slave.

      4. Lì 隸 refers to slaves in an administrative bureaucratic way, and prototypically these menial workers are in public employment, being thus of higher status than mere shepherds or stable-boys in the countryside.

      5. Zānghuò 臧獲 is the standard exampe of the name of a slave.

      Slavery and servant-hood not always easy to distinguish, and this is for very interesting social reasons. A scheme for the place of menials in the status system is systematised in a crucial ZUO Zhao 7 passage:

      故王臣公，公臣大夫，大夫臣士，士臣皁，皁臣輿，輿臣隸，隸臣僚，僚臣僕，僕臣臺。

      馬有圉，牛有牧，