嫁

Derived from 家 (house, family).

Composed of 女 (woman) + 家 (house).

Semantically: a woman (女) leaving her natal family to belong to another household (家) through marriage.

Functions both as 形聲 (phono-semantic compound) with 家 as the phonetic and as 會意 (compound ideograph) indicating “woman + house.”

出嫁 (출가) — to marry out (a woman marrying into another family)

嫁女 (가녀) — to give one’s daughter in marriage

轉嫁 (전가) — to shift, pass on, transfer (blame, responsibility, cost)

嫁妝 (가장) — dowry

改嫁 (개가) — to remarry (for a widow or divorced woman)

In Confucian family culture, 嫁 emphasized the transfer of a woman from her natal clan to her husband’s household, underscoring patrilineal kinship.

The word 出嫁 (“to marry out”) still reflects this perspective in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese usage.

By semantic extension, 嫁 developed figurative senses: to assign, to shift onto others—seen in compounds like 轉嫁 (to transfer responsibility, shift blame).