屎

Meanings

Etymology

Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意) and phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *hliʔ, *hri): phonetic 尸 (OC *hli, “body”) + semantic 米 (“rice”). The 米 component was originally three (, representing 小, as seen in ), four (, representing 少) or five dots (as seen in ) forming a ideogrammic representation of faeces in the oracle bone script, with four dots being the most common variant, thus representing a man defecating with faeces coming out of the backside. The Shang dynasty variants saw the 尸 ("body") component interchangeable with 人 ("human"); later, by the Western Zhou dynasty, 尸 variants with four dots became the dominant and sole-surviving form, however examples from this time period also exist where the 尸 component is mistaken for 尾 ("tail"), as seen in . During the Warring States period, the 少 component became corrupted into 米. Shuowen Jiezi does not feature the 屎 character, however it does contain 𦳊 and 𡕝. 𦳊 is listed in Shuowen as deriving from 艸 ("grass") and 胃 ("stomach"), while 𡲴 is listed as the ancient form of 徙 (“migration”), however in reality this is not the case; 𡲴 is an erroneous form of the 屎 variant containing 尾, where the tail portion of the 尾 component is mistakenly written as 火. During the Zhou dynasty, 屎 was often used as a phonetic borrowing for 徙 (OC *selʔ); moreover, during the Warring States period, the Chu script character for 徙 consisted of 屎 with an additional 辵 (modern radical form 辶) added to represent the meaning of walking. Following transition to the clerical script, a variety of alternative forms emerged: *The 米 component was replaced with phonetic component 矢 (OC *hliʔ) thus creating the variant form 𡱁; *Some variants added another 米 radical to create 𥻐 and 𥺶; *Existing variants containing the 尾 component became 𡲔 and 𡱵; *The body portion of 𡲴 also became further corrupted into 夂 (zhǐ), creating 𡕝; *The tail portion of 尾-based variants became corrupted into 巛, creating 𡲑; *The 尸 component corrupted into 广, creating 𢈍 (shǐ); *Even the variant form 𢈍 became corrupted, where the 广 was simplified into 宀, creating 宩. All of these variant forms failed to gain widespread usage, and eventually faded into obscurity while 屎 remained the dominant character variant. From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *kləj (“excrement”).

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Stroke order

Components

Components from cjk-decomp · MIT

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Synonyms

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Derived terms

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