This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
牙
In brief: serving others, fairly and reasonably
Common reading
Pictographic. The bronze form depicts upper and lower teeth interlocking. Original sense: molars, back teeth; in ancient times those by the lips were called 齿 and those behind the jaw 牙. Shuowen: “牙 means molar; it depicts upper and lower interlocking.” It describes someone clever, quick, alert, nimble and hard to deal with. The go-between in buying and selling: 牙人, 牙郎, 牙商, 牙行 (brokers, brokerages). 牙 was originally the character 互; because the forms are close, it was miswritten as 牙 from the Tang on.
Design reading
才 with a horizontal on top and a vertical added on the left. 才: doing things according to rules and principles is talent (才能); the horizontal on top means talent in accord with the principles of the Fa, and the vertical on the left is serving others. Together: serving others, acting as a go-between (牙人, 牙商), one must be fair and reasonable.
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.