Learn one Chinese Character a day - "一"

"一" means one, or number 1.

let's see how it is evolved till current writings:

left most is the Oracle writing of "一", right most is the printing format of modern "一".
You can see that it is not changed much. When we see Oracle "一" on a shell of turtle, we can immediately know its meaning.

And ancient Chinese consider that everything is generated from the one - "一" and "一" also represents the status of the universe before sky and earth were created, which is close to Christian Bible that God created everything and He is the One. And it can also be close to the Big Bang theory that the whole universe is created from a dot.

Now it should be easy for you to know the meaning and the extended meaning of "一":

• it can mean "the universe"
• it can mean "everything"
• it can mean "same"
• it of course mean "1"

To end, let us enjoy a Chinese Calligraphy with "一" inside. I am sure you can recognize it from below picture.

Chinese Calligraphy with "一" inside