This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
疒
In brief: yin and yang reversed: deviating from the Fa brings illness
Common reading
The sickness radical. 疒 (chuáng): a person who is ill and leans on something to rest. Shuowen, 疒 section: “疒 means to lean. A person is ill; it depicts leaning against something.” Guangyun, level tone, Yang rhyme: “疒 means illness.”
Design reading
Add a short right-falling and left-falling stroke to the left of 广: people with yin and yang reversed, who have deviated from the Fa, all create karma, fall ill and need to be saved. So those who need to be saved are the sick.
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.