This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
曰
In brief: the Dao within the mouth
Common reading
Guangya: “曰 means to speak.” 曰 means a person speaking.
Design reading
When people speak they must accord with principle and not speak recklessly, so the Dao (一) within the mouth is 曰.
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.