This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
武
In brief: stopping the spear: do not resort to force lightly
Common reading
The manuscript gives no common reading for this character, so none is given here.
Design reading
“Stopping the spear is 武”: taking the sense “stop” from 止 and replacing the “left-falling knife stroke” under 戈 with “the horizontal of the Dao” that stands for principle, 武 means “stop the spear with the Dao; do not lightly take up arms”. A great many characters, especially those for negative things, take such ethical norms, encouraging good and stopping evil, as their principle of formation, so that besides expressing meaning they also enlighten the people.
Using 武 to illustrate “principle gives rise to intent” and “intent gives rise to sound”: by the principle “accumulate virtue and do good; great virtue carries all things”, “using force” may run contrary to it, so 武 was given the sense “before using force, consider whether conflict can be turned to peace; do not lightly take up arms” (the true principle of “stopping the spear is 武”). Explanations such as “a person advancing with a spear, showing valour” remove the rationale of the character. With the sense of “suppressing violence and laying down arms”, sound is then produced from it: to seek gain by force is to lose virtue; with one gain and one loss the effort is in vain, “without” (无) merit, so 武 takes the sound of 无 (wú) (sound produced from intent).
Related characters
About this entry
This entry is taken from the edited manuscript of LI Xutong’s Exploring the Design Mysteries of Chinese Characters. The common reading follows traditional philology, the Shuowen Jiezi and other classics, and modern dictionaries; the design reading recovers the rationale of the character’s formation from the meanings of its strokes, the pairing of yin and yang, and the nine-palace layout, following the New Six Scripts. The premise of the design reading, that the generative mechanism of Chinese characters was designed, is an axiom of this system and differs from the evolutionary account usual in philology; the two readings are kept apart, as surface and depth.