Spring ploughing and summer cultivation, autumn harvest and winter Collection reflect the labor scene of farmers throughout the year. Winter is coming, let's get to know the Chinese character for "winter" in winter.
The word "winter" is an abstract concept relative to some visible things, and the ancients generally borrowed an image object to express this type of abstract word. So how did the ancients show the word "winter"?
In Oracle, Winter is borrowed from the image of a rope head, as shown in the image below. Like a rope, there is a knot at each end of a rope, which means the end, which means that the end is over, and the end is over. Winter is the last season of the year, which means the end, and it is also quite graphic to be represented by a rope. Imagine the situation of the ancients at that time, and we will feel how wise the ancients were.
The word "winter" in oracle bones
The formation of writing is a process of continuous evolution, and people will constantly improve and update on the basis of the original. In fact, just a knot is tied on the rope, and it is difficult to intuitively think of winter. So later in the golden text, the word "winter" has been greatly updated and improved. On the basis of the original oracle bone, people put a "day" in the rope circle, indicating that the sun is covered, the heat is shielded, and the weather is cold.
The word "winter" in The Golden Text
The golden text with the word "day" is added to more vividly express the environment and characteristics of the "winter" day, and the word "winter" is not only to express the "end" of the year, but also to represent the cold season, so that people have a relatively more intuitive feeling.
Later, people still felt that the word "winter" in the golden text was not well expressed, so the handwritten "winter" character on the later bamboo jane added the element of "ice". As shown in the figure below, the increase in ice element is more in line with the actual situation in winter.
Later seal texts improved the word "winter", removing the "day" in the rope circle and retaining the "ice" element that represented cold. This improvement is more reasonable to think, after all, the sun that represents "day" still gives people a warm feeling.
In the speech, the word "winter" on the day of "winter" was vividly expressed. It can be seen that the development of Chinese characters is not a process of more and more simplification, but a process of more and more refinement and perfection. In order to make the cold winter clear, the ancients really put a lot of thought into it.
So why is the current word "winter" different from the "winter" of the seal text, and what kind of improvements have been made in the middle?
In fact, the more cleverness of the ancients lies in the change of fonts, in which they invented various fonts such as cursive, lishu, and calligraphy. The invention of cursive writing has allowed many words with complicated and complicated strokes and inconvenient writing to be better displayed.
The current simplified "winter" character is the evolution of the cursive character after the emergence of cursive.
From the oracle bone to the golden text, from the golden text to the seal text, from the evolution of the word "winter", the idea of development is to clarify the winter season, such an abstract concept. In order to express it comprehensively and accurately, it is necessary to increase the elements and strokes, not simplify.
If it were not for the advent of cursive writing, which made the writing of many words convenient, and finally formed the current simple text, we could not write a winter of "winter" now. If you were the one who made the words, how would you make this "winter" word?