This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
末
In brief: close to heaven, the ascent nearing its end
Common reading
Shuowen: “The top of a tree is called 末.” A horizontal added on top of 木 points to where the tip of the tree is. Original sense: treetop.
Design reading
未 and 末, like 土 and 士, are two characters distinguished by the lengths of their two horizontals.
The vertical of 木 passes through the upper horizontal, and the upper horizontal is long, showing that one is already close to heaven and the ascent is nearing its end, having reached the final (末) stage.
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.