Distances and range with 距

The Chinese character 距 is a semantic and phonetic compound. 足, shown in its left-hand form 𧾷, supplies the foot or leg domain; 巨 supplies the sound. Both Kanjipedia’s account from Kadokawa’s revised Shinjigen and the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s database identify the original referent as the spur projecting from the back of a rooster’s or pheasant’s leg. The latter quotes Shuowen Jiezi: “距，雞距也。从足，巨聲。” Kanjipedia, 距, CUHK, 距

CUHK displays bronze-script and small-seal forms. It says the 巨 part of the bronze form resembles an old form of 巨 recorded in Shuowen. The bronze inscriptions it discusses use 距 as a personal name and in the name of a weapon, 距末. They attest the written form, but those uses alone do not prove that the spur sense was already in use in the surviving bronze examples. CUHK, 距

Early texts cited by CUHK use 距 for “reach” or “arrive at” and later for a distance from a point in time. Kanjipedia describes the separation sense as a borrowing from the spur word; CUHK describes distance as a later extension. The sources agree on the spur as the proposed starting sense but frame the route to “distance” differently. 巨 supplies sound in their analyses, not an image of giant strides. CUHK, 距, Kanjipedia, 距