This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. Particularly: “Note that although Baxter-Sagart (2014), using 天 (MC then) as an example, posited *l̥ˤ- > *xˤ- ~ *tʰˤ-, with *xˤ- to the western dialects and *tʰˤ- to the eastern, I'm not sure if it would be borrowed as /kʰ/, instead of, say, /h/, plus there is also a tonal register mismatch.” |
This word might have caused intense contamination to the Sino-Vietnamese reading of the semantically similar 挑 (MC thew) (SV: khiêu), resulted in a very irregular reading.