Amazing Chinese Characters (607) Skeleton - 豖

 The shell bone script of character Skeleton is

One dot on the left and one 

which is shell bone script of character Pig (Post 111).

The original meaning of the character is the Pig Leg Bone, the dot indicates the lower part of the pig.

The small seal script of the character Skeleton is

One short line crosses three legs of the pig. Let's see the corresponding small seal of Pig

The top horizontal line is the pig head, the left three falling down lines + the middle curved left line are four legs, and the right curved down line is the tail. 

The meaning is the pig legs, indicating the bones. 

However, the all dictionaries explains that the meaning is that a pig tied its legs walks difficultly. It looks like the legs are tied, but it means leg bones. 

The character has no bronze, big seal, even clerical scripts, which indicates that the character was abandoned long long time ago, however many compound characters have it as a part. We can find that its meaning in those characters is bone or as hard as bone.