This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
甲
In brief: breaking through the small world, pushing oneself upward
Common reading
Pictographic. The small-seal form depicts the seed coat that a sprouting plant wears splitting open. Original sense: the seed husk worn by a sprouting seed. Shuowen: “甲 is the first of the east, when yang qi stirs and sprouts. From 木, with the image of wearing a husk.” Liushu Gu: “甲 depicts plants emerging wearing their seed.” Book of Changes, “Xie”: “Thunder and rain arise, and the husks (甲) of all fruits, plants and trees split open.”
Design reading
A higher being (十) in this four-sided world (口) breaks through the bonds of this small world, cultivates and raises itself at the lowest place in the universe, and pushes and thrusts its own small world upward: that is 甲. First class, first: showing that this is the most important thing in the world.
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.