This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
片
In brief: making a plane according to a rule
Common reading
Indicative. The oracle-bone form depicts a split piece of wood. Original sense: to split wood and the like. Shuowen: “片 means split wood; from half of 木.” Duan’s note: “A piece of wood split in two.” 片 also means single, one: Guangya, “Shiyan”: “片 means single.”
Design reading
片 refers to a regular plane, and also to the laws of different levels.
The vertical left-falling stroke on the left joins the two horizontals on the right at the middle, showing the sense of chopping according to the principles of these two horizontals. The top horizontal and vertical on the right show “according to a certain rule”, and the horizontal turn below shows a plane. Together: making a plane according to a certain rule, which expresses 片, a slice, or “single”.
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.