Talk:癸

Glyph origin from zhwikt, translated using ChatGPT.

The character 「癸」 originally resembled an ancient weapon shape and was the initial form of the character 「戣」, which was a type of halberd. However, it has been used as a borrowed character for the tenth heavenly stem name. The shape of 「癸」 varied greatly during the Shang and Zhou dynasties, with its four ends sometimes appearing or not appearing, or being rotated 45 degrees. However, the rotated 45-degree shape without the top end looks like the character 「巫」, so this form gradually became less common. Since the Western Zhou dynasty, the short horizontal strokes at the four ends were either changed to outward curved lines, or the inverted "eight" shape (「丷」, which is interchangeable with「八」 in Chinese characters, and「𠆢」inverted "𠆢" shape) under 「癸」 was changed to two vertical strokes. In the Warring States period, this was inherited in the form of the Chu bamboo slips, where the two vertical strokes evolved into the shape of the character 「八」. In Warring States period bronze inscriptions, 「癸」 was also written as a phonetic loan character for the sound of 「戈」 or 「圭」 and was written as 「𫻮」, as seen in the Yuèwáng Zhězhǐ.「𫻮」was also used as a heavenly stem name, which confirms that 「癸」is a type of ancient weapon, and that 「戣」and 「癸」are in a relationship of phonetic substitution. The meaning component of 「戣」was also replaced with the similar meaning component of 「金」to form the character 「鍨」in the Yānwén script. In Qin dynasty bamboo slips, the inverted "𠆢" shape in 「癸」was mistakenly written as the upright "𠆢" shape, and the inverted "𠆢" shape under 「癸」was changed to three "𠆢" shapes. On the upper part of 「癸」, the original shape was preserved, but it was sometimes modified to look like the character 「癶」. In Lishu and Kaishu scripts, the character 「癶」was inherited, and the upper two "𠆢" shapes in Qin dynasty script were written as horizontal strokes or the character 「亠」, resulting in the shapes of 「天」、「夫」、「⿱工八」and「⿱土八」. The shape of 「天」became the mainstream and today, 「癸」has been finalized. In the Shuowen Jiezi, the Chouwen script of 「癸」was mistakenly written as the character 「矢」.

It is also said that 「癸」was a tool for measuring circles and was an ideogrammic representation of 「規」. WiktionariThrowaway (talk) 22:04, 14 February 2023 (UTC)