Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Amazing Chinese Characters (308) Exert (oneself) - 奋(奮)

  The shell bone script of character Exert is

The outside

is Cloth (Post 140).

The middle inside

is Short-Tail Bird (Post 107).

The bottom

is Field (Post 3).

The character has Cloth, Bird, Field. What is the meaning of the character?

《象形字典》(Dictionary of Pictography) explains that people use cloth to capture the bird in the field, the cloth can cover the bird to stop it flying away.

Some people don't agree with this explanation, they think that the character means that the bird captured and covered by cloth try to exert itself to fly away, which shows the meaning of Exert.

The interesting thing in this field, many unknowns and many disputes, not many standard answers.

The big seal script of character Exert is


Similar to bronze script.

The small seal script of the character is

The outside Cloth become bent 土 (soil) on the top, the middle Bird, and bottom Field keep the same.

The clerical script of the character is


The top 土 become 大 (big), the middle and bottom keep the same.

The traditional sone typeface is


Similar to the clerical script.

The simplified song typeface is

The middle  隹 (bird) disappeared, lost the most important part.

Its Pinyin is Fen4. 

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