Learn one Chinese Character a day - 箭

For the character today - 箭, we are now fully prepared to dissemble it to guess its meaning. It should be quite obvious for us that 箭 is composed of  and 前.

is actually 竹 while it is used as a Radical. So 箭 must be something related to 竹. 

And as for 前, most of us think 前 is only a phonetic element - 箭 pronounces as jiàn,  while 前 pronounces as qián. After knowing original meaning of 前, we now know 前 provides more than just phonetic function here. Same as 剪, 前 was added to 箭 to mean something made by 竹, piercing or cutting forward like a knife.

Now possible candidates are very limited. Following picture shows what that something is:

箭 - arrows

It is possible that during certain period of ancient China, entire arrow including arrow heads were made from bamboo directly. Metal arrow head might appear later when metallurgy technology was developed in China.

Recall that we have learnt 矢, which means arrow as well, what could be the difference between 矢 and 箭? 矢, with its pronunciation similar to 石, I believe that 矢 was made with stone as its arrow head in stone age. Oracle script of 矢 -  could probably tell us already. Does not its arrow head look like a stone bound to head of an arrow?

So 箭 means arrow.

Let us examine its evolution history to get better understanding of 箭: (image get from http://www.vividict.com)

Learn one Chinese Character a day - 箭

And now it is time to enjoy a Chinese calligraphy with 箭 inside:

归心似箭