This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
已
In brief: one's true nature covered by desire: it must stop
Common reading
Already. In the Book of Songs, “Zhengfeng, Fengyu”, on “the cock crows without ceasing (已)”, the commentary says: “已 means to stop.” Original sense: to stop.
Design reading
Where the vertical-bend-hook meets the middle horizontal on the left it pushes through, showing that a person’s true nature has already been covered by the physical body, and the person has already (已) come to be ruled by material desire. This state is dangerous and should “stop”, so this became the original sense of 已, warning people not to go on like this.
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.