“义赈”一词最晚在16世纪己经产生。在其后数百年中，该词的流布情况，以及与之相关联的实践内容，都出现了重大变化。起初，该词主要被作为捐赈活动的一个褒称，使用频率十分有限。到19世纪前半期，该词开始被用来指称一种特定的地方性赈灾活动，其名声得到较为广泛的传播。从19世纪70年代起，该词又成为新兴民间赈灾活动的专名，并风行于海内外。这种名称不变而实践内容发生剧烈转换的状况，体现的正是一种既传承又超越的新陈代谢进程。而结合社会史和文化史来充分理解这一进程，也可以为考察中国民间赈灾事业的演变提供一条有益的线索。

 As a term for charity famine relief   “yizhen”was coined by the sixteenth century at the latest.Hundreds of years later ，both the dissemination of the term and the practices related to it changed dramatically.  Originally，“yizhen”was regarded as a respectable name for the act of donating to relief.  Until the first half of nineteenth century，the term indicated a kind of famine relief by local civil society ,and its reputation spread widely.  From the end of the 1870’s, “yizhen”became the proper name for a new kind of civil relief that was renown throughout China.  These developments reflected both inheritance and transcendence of the term and the practice in a “metabolic”process.  Fully exploring this process in combination with the perspectives of social history and cultural history , the author argues , will help us to find another thread in the changing course of civil relief in modern China.