Tuesday, June 29, 2021

Amazing Chinese characters (423) Body - 尸(屍)

 The shell bone script of character Body is

We can recall the character Person (Post 37)


The difference between the two is that the Person's leg is straight and the Body's is twist. It is disputable on why the character Body is twist not the Person. I have not found one explanation is better than others.

The bronze script of the character is
Similar to shell bone script.

The big seal script of the character is

Which changes big, but still has some similarity to older scripts.

The small seal script of the character is 

Similar to big seal script.

The clerical script of the character is

The left is closed, and lost the original pictography.

The song typeface of traditional character is

The character under Body is Death/Died, means it is a dead body.

The song typeface of simplified character is
Same as the clerical script.

Its pinyin is Shi1.

尸 is Body, a living body. There is another character 屍 - 尸 + 死(Dead), means Dead Body.
During simplification of Chinese characters in 1950s, experts merged character Dead Body - 屍 with 尸, and abandoned 屍. So right now, 尸 means Dead Body in most of time used alone right now. But it still means living body as a part of character, which makes some confusion,  


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