<p>You can click into the page of each character with this component, such as 春, 奉, 泰, etc, to see their glyph origins. Actually they may have several different origins although they all have the shape of  now. For instance, <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A5%89#Glyph_origin" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A5%89#Glyph_origin</a> says the above part was phonetic 丰 and was later corrupted to . <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%B3%B0#Glyph_origin" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%B3%B0#Glyph_origin</a> seems to also have a corruption: 大 and <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%BB%BE#Glyph_origin" rel="nofollow noreferrer">廾</a> (which means both hands) merged into .</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-06-13T00:26:27.093Z
2021-06-13T00:26:27.093Z
Betty
<p><strong>A first reminder:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Chinese characters represent Chinese <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morpheme" rel="noreferrer">morphemes</a>;</li>
<li>In addition to <em>meaning</em>, Chinese morphemes overwhelmingly have <strong>one-syllable sounds</strong> as a core part of their property;</li>
<li>As character components, do not ever disregard that a lot of components only hint at the <strong>sound</strong> of a Chinese morpheme, and not the <em>meaning</em>.</li>
</ul>
<p>If you only rely on the <em>meaning</em> of a component when it only hints at <strong>sound</strong> (and not <em>meaning</em>) in a character, you're going to misunderstand how the character system works. This is true regardless of whether you're studying a Chinese language or some other language which uses Chinese characters (e.g. Japanese).</p>
<p>How does this help with this question? Well, if you have a <strong>sound</strong>, you can be very sure that the <strong>sound</strong> is attached to a concrete word or morpheme. In this case, if some resource gives the pronunciation <strong>pěng</strong> for 「」, then you have the <strong>sound</strong> part of a morpheme or word, so you're actually halfway there to finding the meaning.</p>
<p><sub>But again, the meaning of the component might not matter in the character you're studying, so don't go overboard in trying to find meanings of components.</sub></p>
<p>The word that <strong>pěng</strong> refers to is very likely now written as 「捧」, with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognate" rel="noreferrer">cognate</a> 「奉」 as a more probable candidate for a basic glyph derivation. The glyph evolution sequence for 「奉」 is given below:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><kbd><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Zhou" rel="noreferrer">西周</a><br><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_bronze_inscriptions" rel="noreferrer">金</a><br><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/8y0Hl.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/8y0Hl.png" alt="奉" /></a><br>散氏盤<br><a href="http://www.guoxuedashi.net/yzjwjc/?bh=10176&amp;jgwfl=" rel="noreferrer">集成10176</a></kbd><kbd><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warring_States_period" rel="noreferrer">戰國</a>・<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jin_(Chinese_state)" rel="noreferrer">晉</a><br><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_(East_Asia)" rel="noreferrer">璽印</a><br><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/vPofe.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/vPofe.png" alt="奉" /></a><br>0898<br>古璽彙編</kbd><kbd><br><a href="https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hk/%E9%9A%B6%E5%AE%9A" rel="noreferrer">隸定</a><br><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/dtNve.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/dtNve.png" alt="" /></a><br><br>　</kbd></p>
<p>「奉」 (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstructions_of_Old_Chinese#Zhengzhang_(1981%E2%80%931995)" rel="noreferrer">Zhengzhang OC</a>: <strong>/*boŋʔ/</strong>, <em>to hold something with both hands</em>) was originally made up of semantic <a href="https://xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw/yanbian?kaiOrder=60" rel="noreferrer">「廾」 (<em>picture of two hands</em>)</a> and phonetic <a href="https://xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw/yanbian?kaiOrder=68" rel="noreferrer">「丰」</a> (<strong>/*pʰoŋ/</strong>).</p>
<p><kbd><br><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_seal_script" rel="noreferrer">篆</a><br><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/bQCqq.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/bQCqq.png" alt="奉" /></a><br><a href="https://ctext.org/library.pl?if=gb&amp;file=77389&amp;page=94" rel="noreferrer">廾部</a><br><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuowen_Jiezi" rel="noreferrer">說文解字</a></kbd><kbd><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_dynasty#Western_Han" rel="noreferrer">西漢</a><br><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerical_script" rel="noreferrer">隸</a><br><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/fHs6M.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/fHs6M.png" alt="奉" /></a><br>春秋事語66<br><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mawangdui_Silk_Texts" rel="noreferrer">馬王堆帛書</a></kbd><kbd><br><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_script" rel="noreferrer">楷</a><br><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/nwouz.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/nwouz.png" alt="奉" /></a><br><br>　</kbd></p>
<p>An extra <a href="https://xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw/yanbian?kaiOrder=129" rel="noreferrer"><em>hand</em> 「手・扌」</a> was added later to further emphasise the meaning <em>to hold</em>, and this became the modern 「奉」.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<p><strong>A second reminder:</strong> The majority of Chinese characters in use today were invented by the time of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_dynasty" rel="noreferrer">Qín dynasty</a>. Therefore, whatever you see in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_script" rel="noreferrer">regular script</a> may be the result of centuries or millennia of graphical corruption, and not the original components.</p>
<p>The following is a table of graphical corruptions of different characters containing components which now all turned into the shape of 「」 in regular script. <em>DO NOT take regular script components too seriously.</em></p>
<div class="s-table-container">
<table class="s-table">
<thead>
<tr>
<th style="text-align: center;">廾 + 丰</th>
<th style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw/yanbian?kaiOrder=5569" rel="noreferrer">艸</a> + <a href="https://xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw/yanbian?kaiOrder=120" rel="noreferrer">屯</a></th>
<th style="text-align: center;">廾 + <a href="https://xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw/yanbian?kaiOrder=103" rel="noreferrer">午</a></th>
<th style="text-align: center;">廾 + <a href="https://xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw/yanbian?kaiOrder=43" rel="noreferrer">大</a></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/8y0Hl.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/8y0Hl.png" alt="奉" /></a></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/gBoVA.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/gBoVA.png" alt="萅" /></a></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/FdNmx.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/FdNmx.png" alt="舂" /></a></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/guzr0.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/guzr0.png" alt="泰" /></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/vPofe.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/vPofe.png" alt="奉" /></a></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/9caoz.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/9caoz.png" alt="萅" /></a></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/JsCe7.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/JsCe7.png" alt="舂" /></a></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/7sFMm.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/7sFMm.png" alt="泰" /></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/bQCqq.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/bQCqq.png" alt="奉" /></a></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/GK2Hy.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/GK2Hy.png" alt="萅" /></a></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/qaABj.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/qaABj.png" alt="舂" /></a></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/Cn3uP.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/Cn3uP.png" alt="泰" /></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/fHs6M.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/fHs6M.png" alt="奉" /></a></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/omB8b.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/omB8b.png" alt="春" /></a></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/c1ZDJ.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/c1ZDJ.png" alt="舂" /></a></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/to0Dr.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/to0Dr.png" alt="泰" /></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/nwouz.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/nwouz.png" alt="奉" /></a></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/sFZDd.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/sFZDd.png" alt="春" /></a></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/UjADN.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/UjADN.png" alt="舂" /></a></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/KXYqP.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/KXYqP.png" alt="泰" /></a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div><hr />
<p><strong>Reference:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw/yanbian" rel="noreferrer">小學堂字形演變</a></li>
</ul>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-06-13T01:51:57.093Z
excellent  from now on, one can refer back to this answer for “don’t fixate on regular script” 
水巷孑蠻
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-06-13T03:14:10.223Z
Even if a component has to do nothing with the meaning of a particular character, by memorizing that component it makes easier to memorize the caracter. The memory refers to a single piece in different characters, and not to a lot of strokes which you dont recognize as the same, but which are the same in different characters.
Pablo
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-06-13T00:45:12.787Z
2021-06-13T00:45:12.787Z
dROOOze
<p>I was looking for the meaning of  which appears as component of characters in several languages, and I couldnt find any. Having the meaning of a component it makes easier to memorize characters that component is part of. Here they mention it appears in chinese, japanese, korean and vietnamese but it gives no meaning and pronunciation. <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%F0%A1%97%97" rel="nofollow noreferrer">  Wikipedia </a></p>
<p>Here  <a href="https://hsk.academy/en/characters/%F0%A1%97%97" rel="nofollow noreferrer"></a> it says apparently its pronuncation is pěng, but it gives no meaning.</p>
<p>Does this character  have a meaning?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-06-13T00:48:08.313Z
At Chinese SE, we don't use [tag:etymology] for character component questions - please use [tag:glyph-origin].
dROOOze
<glyph-origin><character-components>
Does this character  have a meaning?
# Does this character  have a meaning?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2021-06-12)

I was looking for the meaning of which appears as component of characters in several languages, and I couldnt find any. Having the meaning of a component it makes easier to memorize characters that component is part of. Here they mention it appears in chinese, japanese, korean and vietnamese but it gives no meaning and pronunciation.  [Wikipedia](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%F0%A1%97%97)

Here  it says apparently its pronuncation is pěng, but it gives no meaning.

Does this character have a meaning?

**Tags:** glyph-origin, character-components

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: At Chinese SE, we don't use [tag:etymology] for character component questions - please use [tag:glyph-origin].  

---

## 2 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2021-06-13. Score: 5 | Accepted answer

**A first reminder:**

* Chinese characters represent Chinese [morphemes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morpheme);
* In addition to *meaning*, Chinese morphemes overwhelmingly have **one-syllable sounds** as a core part of their property;
* As character components, do not ever disregard that a lot of components only hint at the **sound** of a Chinese morpheme, and not the *meaning*.

If you only rely on the *meaning* of a component when it only hints at **sound** (and not *meaning*) in a character, you're going to misunderstand how the character system works. This is true regardless of whether you're studying a Chinese language or some other language which uses Chinese characters (e.g. Japanese).

How does this help with this question? Well, if you have a **sound**, you can be very sure that the **sound** is attached to a concrete word or morpheme. In this case, if some resource gives the pronunciation **pěng** for 「」, then you have the **sound** part of a morpheme or word, so you're actually halfway there to finding the meaning.

But again, the meaning of the component might not matter in the character you're studying, so don't go overboard in trying to find meanings of components.

The word that **pěng** refers to is very likely now written as 「捧」, with the [cognate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognate) 「奉」 as a more probable candidate for a basic glyph derivation. The glyph evolution sequence for 「奉」 is given below:

> `西周  
> 金  
> ![奉](https://i.sstatic.net/8y0Hl.png)  
> 散氏盤  
> 集成10176``戰國・晉  
> 璽印  
> ![奉](https://i.sstatic.net/vPofe.png)  
> 0898  
> 古璽彙編` `隸定  
> ![](https://i.sstatic.net/dtNve.png)`
>
> 「奉」 ([Zhengzhang OC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstructions_of_Old_Chinese#Zhengzhang_(1981%E2%80%931995)): **/\*boŋʔ/**, *to hold something with both hands*) was originally made up of semantic [「廾」 (*picture of two hands*)](https://xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw/yanbian?kaiOrder=60) and phonetic [「丰」](https://xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw/yanbian?kaiOrder=68) (**/\*pʰoŋ/**).
>
> `篆  
> ![奉](https://i.sstatic.net/bQCqq.png)  
> 廾部  
> 說文解字``西漢  
> 隸  
> ![奉](https://i.sstatic.net/fHs6M.png)  
> 春秋事語66  
> 馬王堆帛書` `楷  
> ![奉](https://i.sstatic.net/nwouz.png)`
>
> An extra [*hand* 「手・扌」](https://xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw/yanbian?kaiOrder=129) was added later to further emphasise the meaning *to hold*, and this became the modern 「奉」.

---

**A second reminder:** The majority of Chinese characters in use today were invented by the time of the [Qín dynasty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_dynasty). Therefore, whatever you see in [regular script](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_script) may be the result of centuries or millennia of graphical corruption, and not the original components.

The following is a table of graphical corruptions of different characters containing components which now all turned into the shape of 「」 in regular script. *DO NOT take regular script components too seriously.*

| 廾 + 丰 | [艸](https://xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw/yanbian?kaiOrder=5569) + [屯](https://xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw/yanbian?kaiOrder=120) | 廾 + [午](https://xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw/yanbian?kaiOrder=103) | 廾 + [大](https://xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw/yanbian?kaiOrder=43) |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [奉](https://i.sstatic.net/8y0Hl.png) | [萅](https://i.sstatic.net/gBoVA.png) | [舂](https://i.sstatic.net/FdNmx.png) | [泰](https://i.sstatic.net/guzr0.png) |
| [奉](https://i.sstatic.net/vPofe.png) | [萅](https://i.sstatic.net/9caoz.png) | [舂](https://i.sstatic.net/JsCe7.png) | [泰](https://i.sstatic.net/7sFMm.png) |
| [奉](https://i.sstatic.net/bQCqq.png) | [萅](https://i.sstatic.net/GK2Hy.png) | [舂](https://i.sstatic.net/qaABj.png) | [泰](https://i.sstatic.net/Cn3uP.png) |
| [奉](https://i.sstatic.net/fHs6M.png) | [春](https://i.sstatic.net/omB8b.png) | [舂](https://i.sstatic.net/c1ZDJ.png) | [泰](https://i.sstatic.net/to0Dr.png) |
| [奉](https://i.sstatic.net/nwouz.png) | [春](https://i.sstatic.net/sFZDd.png) | [舂](https://i.sstatic.net/UjADN.png) | [泰](https://i.sstatic.net/KXYqP.png) |

---

**Reference:**

* [小學堂字形演變](https://xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw/yanbian)

> **Comments:**
> **username_3**: excellent  from now on, one can refer back to this answer for “don’t fixate on regular script”   
> **username_0**: Even if a component has to do nothing with the meaning of a particular character, by memorizing that component it makes easier to memorize the caracter. The memory refers to a single piece in different characters, and not to a lot of strokes which you dont recognize as the same, but which are the same in different characters.  

---

### Answer by username_2 on 2021-06-13. Score: 1

You can click into the page of each character with this component, such as 春, 奉, 泰, etc, to see their glyph origins. Actually they may have several different origins although they all have the shape of now. For instance, <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A5%89#Glyph_origin> says the above part was phonetic 丰 and was later corrupted to . <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%B3%B0#Glyph_origin> seems to also have a corruption: 大 and [廾](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%BB%BE#Glyph_origin) (which means both hands) merged into .


---

