Amazing Chinese Characters (395) Dry - 干 (乾，幹）

 The shell bone script of character Dry is

which is a bifurcated trunk, the horizontal line is an indicator to tell what the character really means: the main trunk of the tree, which is the original meaning of the character. It is an indicative character.

The bronze script of the character is

Similar to the shell bone script except the dot replaces the horizontal line. 

The big seal script of the character is

Similar to bronze script.

The small seal script of the character is

The bifurcated trunk becomes ox horns alike.

When the character evolved to clerical script, it has multiple forms. 

The first clerical script of the character is

which means Tree Trunk, but I don't know where it comes from, can'f find information about its older scripts.

The second clerical script of the character is

Which means Dry.

This character has its own evolution. Let us see its bronze script

The center circle with a dot inside is character Sun （日）, the bottom is character Fire (火), the top over the Sun is grass, the side waves are air or water vapor flow. The character means that hot sun plus fire make the water evaporate very quickly, and dry everything.

Then we could go back to explain the big seal script above. 

We can see the Sun, the grass, the fire became grass, and the side curves are water vapor. 

The small seal script of the character is

Similar to big seal script.

The clerical script of the character is

Similar to small seal script.

The simplified song typeface for Dry is

干

The traditional song typeface for Dry is

乾

The traditional song typeface for Trunk is

Simplification merged the two traditional characters into 干 .

Its pinyin is Gan1 for Dry, and Gan4 for Trunk.