yuè
cutting off feet as form of punishment
Originally a pictograph of a saw cutting off a person's foot. Later the character was changed to a phonosemantic compound. 刂 represents the meaning and 月 represents the sound.
Evolution
Oracle script
(~1250-1000 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Qin dynasty (221-206 BC)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*[ŋ]ʷˤ<r>at | ngwaet | yuè | amputate a foot |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
5475th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 6 |
Unicode | U+5216 |
Shuowen | “刖，絕也。从刀，月聲。” |
Sources
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