Friday, September 7, 2018

Amazing Chinese Characters (211) Autumn - 秋

The shell bone script of character Autumn is


which is a picture of cricket which are seen everywhere in autumn.

There is another shell bone script of Autumn


which is a cricket in a hole, which means that the weather is getting cold, cricket is back to hole for winter.

The big seal script of the character is 

on the left is Rice plant, on the right is Fire, totally different from the shell bone script.

Why it changed so big? The Pictography Dictionary explains that people miswrote the Rice as cricket   + Fire. I disagree. I think that people just created the character from different description of the autumn: the Rice plant means that it is the harvesting season, the Fire means that it is a red season (red looks like fire). The fruits are red, the leaves are red, the clouds are red, and more are red in autumn.

The small seal script of the character is

similar to big seal script except the Fire on left and the Rice on right, exchanged position.

The clerical script of the character is 
similar to big seal script 

The song typeface of the character is 


Its pinyin is Qiu1.

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