This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
與
In brief: the best thing to give others is the Fa
Common reading
Now the simplified form of 與. Compound-ideative. The small-seal form joins 一 and 勺 to show giving something to others. 與 is from 与 and from 舁 (yú, “to lift together”); 与 means to give. Together they mean together with, a friend. Original sense: to bestow, to give. Shuowen: “与 means to bestow. One 勺 is 与. This 与 is the same as 與.”
Design reading
What is the best thing to give others? The Fa. The horizontal at the upper right shows obtaining the Fa oneself, and the horizontal at the lower left shows spreading the Fa to others. The Fa is something one still has after giving it to others; such giving is the most precious. So when giving something to others, one can first think: have I given them the Fa first?
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.