Amazing Chinese Characters (256) Hair - 毛

The bronze script for character Hair is

which is grass, lush grass.

The big seal script of the character is

similar to its bronze script.

Let's recall the character Hand - 手 (Post 55), its big seal script is

which is mirror symmetric to character Hair, a little bit confusing.

The small seal script of the character Hair is

compare it to the character Hand

mirror symmetric.

As we have seen, originally character Hair means grass, but it became to mean "hair" - animal and human hair long time ago.

The clerical script of character Hair

in comparison with Hand

the difference is a little bit bigger.

Its song typeface is

毛

which is big different from song typeface Hand,

手

As time past, the original meaning of Hair has expanded from grass to hair, nowadays, it means human or animal hair in most of time but grass in some cases especially in proverbs, e.g. proverb 不毛之地 - soil with no grass at all (barren land).

Its pinyin is Mao2.

Amazing Chinese Characters (255) Universal - 普

The big seal script of character Universal is

the top is two people standing side by side

which is the bronze script of the character of "Side by Side" (see Post 241)

the bottom is Sun.

There are people who stand side by side in the early morning when the sun is rising.

Every one share the same sunshine, which means universal.

The small seal script of the character is

very similar to the big seal script

The clerical script of the character is

the top is 並, means two people standing side by side, just simplified from the old scripts.

However, 並 as a single character is not used in simplified Chinese any more (see Post 241), but it is still used in characters as a radical or part of the character like 普 above, in which the top is 並, not 并.

Its Pinyin is Pu3.

Nowadays, 普 has the meaning of General too. Same as English, the difference between Universal and General is very subtle, Chinese just share the same character to mean both. People could figure out which meaning in the context.