How did 东西 come to mean "something" in the expression "吃东西"?

Question

I was chatting with a Chinese penpal recently and when I asked "what are you doing?", I received the following answer:

吃东西，你呢？

Now, "东西" means "east and west" and so "吃东西" literally means "eat/eating east and west".

After I asked for explanations, I got this reply "I am eating something". The explanation included the fact that this depends on context.

So, how did 东西 come to mean "something"? And in what contexts can it be found with what meanings?

If the list is long, include only the most famous cases (5, 10 cases).

Answer 1

This is a good question about etymology of Chinese word. Most native speakers are not interested in etymology as they can speak out of habit while non-native speakers are more curious on how the sense of words evolves. Back to your question, there are nice articles on both Wikipedia and Baidu Baike that explains the etymology of "东西". Since there are acutally quite a few explanations for this one, so I cannot translate them all here. But I can help you if you have trouble to understand particular sentences.

Answer 2

The only use I've heard for 东西 is to mean "thing". CEDICT has two definitions:

thing / stuff / person

east and west

I've come across the first one many times, but I've never seen it used literally as in the second one. Here are a couple of examples from tatoeba.org:

这就是我在西班牙买的东西。

This is what I bought in Spain. [Or, "This is the thing I bought in Spain."]

总有一些东西我永远不能学会，我的生命不是永恒的！

There will always be things I will never learn, I don't have eternity before me!

As you can see in the first example, you wouldn't always translate 东西 directly as "thing". It sometimes is replaced by a pronoun in English, like "what".

Answer 3

"东西" almost always means "something," though as Don says you might more gracefully translate it by another word. And as Jon commented, when it does not mean "something", then it is pronounced differently.

Friends in Taiyuan told me of a conference of Eastern and Western Provinces in China that did not include the (central) province of Shanxi. They joked on the two meanings by saying "山西不是东西." A more careful grammarian could spoil the joke by saying "山西不是东西方。"

Answer 4

ok I'm a chinese let me give you the real answer they first of one 东西mean east and west it's right,but why this word have mean “something”？ cause its according old chinese languag and have two origins

1. In WuXing, west means glod, east means wood, north means water, south means fire, where only gold and wood are solid stuff that can be taken away, so buy east and west mean buy something

2. In ancient chinese have shopping mall at east and west (I'm just kidding, but it's real), so chinese people use “I'll go buy west and east” to express they want buy something

buy the way 东西 have two mean of something

1. is just something

2. is something bad

Like 你真不是个东西（you are real a bad guy）

In the end I have to tell you guys 东西 have so many origins, usually Chinese don't know where they from, we just use it.

Thank you for watch my answer my English is not good but I'm still leaning, I'll appreciate it if you can some suggestions

Answer 5

Read this answer... it explains the reason in great detail, but it's too long to post here.

Basically buying something from the east town/something from the west town... eventually it just became buy something (east/west).

http://gbtimes.com/life/hello-china-97-things

Oh, and there's a cute video at the bottom too.

Answer 6

Afaik 东西 always stands for "something" or "a thing". However the question might point to the origin of this meaning. A Chinese teaching professor once told me, that the silk road goes from east to west, which is from 东 to 西 and there were many goods traded on the silk road and that's how this meaning came to be.

Answer 7

I like how nobody even tried to answer the question at the end, "and in what contexts can it be found and with what meanings?" Here are a few that I always heard:

1. mai dongxi which means to go shopping. (lit. buy stuff)
2. chi dongxi which means to eat something. (lit. to eat stuff)
3. nvhai you tai duo ge dongxi which means girls have too much stuff.
4. ni xiang mai shenme dongxi? which means, "what do you want to buy" (lit. you want to buy what stuff?).

Now you have to understand that "something" is a very unique word to English that has many many meanings. To my knowledge there is no Chinese equivalent word, so dongxi is really just a word that basically means stuff in the physical sense.