Amazing Chinese Characters (394) Bizarre - 异（異）

 The shell bone script of character Bizarre is

Which is a person uses two hands to wear a bizarre mask covering all face. People who presides over the sacrifice in which living people as sacrifice, or executioner fear to be retaliated, wearing the mask to cover their faces. 

The bronze script of the character is

Very similar to shell bone script.

The small seal script of the character is

The top is the mask, the middle are two hands, and the bottom is the body.

There is another small seal script for the character

The top is character My Self, the bottom is two hands. The character My Self actually is a rope, the dictionaries have not a good explanation on why a roll rope means My Self. What I think is that in ancient China, minority like to braid and bun hair, which is different from Han majority. My Self is different from others by the hair style. Now there are two hands under the hair, meaning to make the difference, emphasizing the difference, and strange. But it is not bizarre. 

The clerical script of the character is

The traditional song typeface of the character is

 

異

Similar to clerical script.

The simplified song typeface of the character is

异

which is similar to the second small seal script above, but there is a minor difference: the top of small seal script is character Me Self (己), but the top of the simplified song typeface is character Already (已). The difference is so small that you may not be able to notice, which is a mistake. But I don't discuss this topic here.

By the way, 异 is not formal character in traditional Chinese character. The simplified song typeface just uses  异 to replace the 異, not merge the two into one. They have similar meaning but not exactly the same.

Its Pinyin is Yi4.