This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
身
In brief: that which shows oneself outwardly
Common reading
Shuowen: “身 means the trunk; it depicts a person.” Note: the original sense of 身 is the human torso. Wang Shuzhi, Jingyi Shuwen: “From the neck down and the heels up, all is called 身. Below the neck and above the thighs is also called 身.” Book of Rites, “Jiyi”: “The body is what one’s parents have left behind.”
Design reading
自 combined with 才: the bottom horizontal pushes out on the left, the right vertical extends down into a vertical hook, and a left-falling stroke is added.
The bottom horizontal of 自 pushing out on the left, the right vertical extending down, and the left-falling stroke all carry the sense of showing; the vertical hook shows that this outward showing develops into another dimension and can show one’s true self. Together: what can show oneself outwardly is one’s 身, the body. But one must not take this body for one’s true self: protecting and maintaining the body is necessary, but going too far is not good.
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.