Amazing Chinese characters (416) Morning - 朝

  The shell bone script of character Morning is

The right is character Evening - 夕 (Post 52), here is a gloomy moon in the morning. The middle of left part is the sun, under and over it are grass. The sun is in grass, which means the sun is just rising up just above the horizon, same level as the grass. This is what we see often in the morning.

The bronze script of the character is

The left of both characters is similar as that of the shell bone script, except there is a dot in the sun, which is standard form of character Sun. However the right part of both characters is not moon but a river. The left one has no water drops, the right one does. Different people draw the character differently based on their own understanding. The two show that morning is the sun just rises up near a river. 

The big seal script of the character is

Similar to bronze script, especially the right one.

The small seal script of the character is

The left is similar to older script, sun and grass. The right part is a cover on the top, and character Boat (Post 117). 《象形字典》- "The dictionary of pictography" considers that is written mistakenly. I don't thinks so. It is just different people's different idea of the morning: the boat in the river, which is perfect to describe the morning too.

The clerical script of the character is

The left part is similar to older scripts except all bent lines are straight which is typical clerical characteristics. The right part is character Moon - 月, which is similar to shell bone, bronze scripts.

The song typeface of the character is

朝

Same as the clerical script.

Its Pinyin is Zhao1.

The character is a Noun. There is another character Morning - 早 (Post 266) is adjective.

朝 also means Toward, or To as preposition, same as 向 (Post 415). It is pronounced Chao2 while it means Toward or To.