Amazing Chinese Characters (173) Sand - 沙

The shell bone script of character Sand is

which are small particles of sand.

The character also meant Small or Less. Both Small and Sand shared the same character.

However, the character was used for Small only later on.

So ancient Chinese added Water to the left of the character to make a new character Sand in bronze script:

Also in big seal script

small dots on the right are sand particles, the dots on the left are water drops.

Its small seal script is

No sand particles because the small seal script has no dots which are related by short strokes.

The clerical script for the character

All left parts are Water, the right parts are Less (or Small).

The current standard script is

沙

Its Pinyin is Sha1.