舞
wǔ HSK3

dance

Originally written as 無, which is a pictograph of a person dancing, with ox tails or bird feathers hanging from his arms, to pray for rain. The 舛 (two feet) component was later added to emphasize the action of dancing after 無 was phonetically borrowed for different meanings.

Components

舛
舛 Iconic component
chuǎn oppose

Depicts two feet.

無
wú negative

Depicts a person dancing with ox tails or bird feathers hanging from his arms.


Character Evolution

Oracle form
Oracle Bone ~1250-1000 BC
Oracle form
Oracle Bone ~1250-1000 BC
Oracle form
Oracle Bone ~1250-1000 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Early Western Zhou ~1000 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Late Spring and Autumn ~500 BC
Seal form
Seal Shuowen ~100 AD
Seal form
Seal Shuowen ~100 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Western Han 202 BC-9 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Western Han 202 BC-9 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Eastern Han 25-220 AD
Regular Modern

Historical Pronunciations

Middle ChineseOld ChineseGloss
Baxter-SagartmjuXk.m(r)aʔ dance (v.)

說文解字

《說文》:“舞,樂也。用足相背。从舛,舞聲。,古文舞从羽、亡。”

Sources

Character origin
漢語多功能字庫季旭昇《說文新證》p.472林志強《《文源》評注》p.203
Readings & variants
Unicode
Historical pronunciations
Baxter-Sagart
Historical images
Academia Sinica