Amazing Chinese Characters (328) Half - 半

The bronze script of character Half is

The top is character Eight, meaning Separate or Divide here (See Post 156), the bottom is character Ox or Cow. To cut an Ox by half is the original meaning of the character.

The big seal script of character Half is

Similarly, the top is Separate (Eight), the bottom is Ox.

The small seal script of the character is

A little bit change but still very similar to the old scripts.

The clerical script of the character is

The top Eight becomes two dots, the bottom Ox misses a stroke

in order to avoid the two strokes (the dot or left-falling stroke in character Eight, and the left-falling stroke in character Ox) cross each other.

The Pinyin of the character is Ban4.