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. represents the meaning and represents the sound.

Components
月 sound component

  Sound component

yuè

  

moon

刂 meaning component

  Meaning component

dāo

  

knife

Evolution

刖 Oracle script (~1250-1000 BC)

Oracle script

(~1250-1000 BC)
刖 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
刖 Clerical script Qin dynasty (221-206 BC)

Clerical script

Qin dynasty (221-206 BC)
刖 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

 

yuè

cutting off feet as form of punishment; to amputate one or both feet (punishment in imperial China); see also 五刑[wǔ​xíng]

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。”


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Creative Commons License