This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
厶
In brief: what has slanted must be righted; look within
Common reading
The ancient form of 私 (sī, “private”), the opposite of 公 (“public”). Wicked; personal; one’s own. Yupian, 厶 section: “厶 means wicked; today written 私.” Duan Yucai’s note to 厶 in the Shuowen: “Such were the original characters for public and private; today 私 is used and 厶 has fallen out of use.” Hanfeizi: “When Cangjie made the script of old, what encircles itself he called 厶, and what turns its back on 厶 he called 公.”
Design reading
厶: the left-falling stroke shows slanting, deviating from the Fa; the horizontal turn shows the need to be righted; the dot shows the need to look within. Together: “what has slanted must be righted, and one must look within”.
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.