This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
走
In brief: people falling down into the earth of the Three Realms
Common reading
Compound-ideative. The bronze form depicts a person running with arms swinging, with a foot below; together they show a person running. Original sense: to run. Shuowen: “走 means to hurry.” Liu Xi (Han), Shiming, “Shi Zirong”: “Walking slowly is 步, walking fast is 趋, … hurrying fast is 走.” When someone has died, one also says they have 走, “gone”. To flee: Mencius, “King Hui of Liang I”: “When the blades had crossed, they threw off their armour and fled (走), dragging their weapons.”
Design reading
土 + 下 + 人 = 走. People fall down into the earth of the Three Realms, and the fall level after level is very fast; this scene is used for 走, running fast. Walking is the most basic action of human life, and the intent of making the character this way is to remind people: you are beings who have come down, walking in the earth of the Three Realms; you should escape from this place as soon as possible.
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.