Learn one Chinese Character a day - 草

Our new Chinese character today 草 is obviously composed of 艹 and 早. What is its meaning here? We have known that 艹means grass, while 早 means morning. What is the aggregated meaning of 草? It is quite clueless. Let us check its evolution history to see whether we can have more ideas from its ancient scripts: (image taken from http://chinese-linguipedia.org)

Learn one Chinese Character a day - 草

Oracle Script of 草 is unknown, Its Bronze Script and Seal Script can give us some help to understand its meaning. For , below image is better than a thousand words.

a vivid view of 草

is the drawing of "sun shines upon grass in the early morning", Looking at its Seal Script ，recall that means seeds is just sprouting. So or also hints

that the grass land is thriving as well. Current form 草 is the continuation of .

Now it is time to reveal the answer: 草 means grass.
And from its original meaning, 草 can mean grass land or wild places.
And grass normally grows in a disorganised way, so 草 is extended to mean disorganised, messy, draft, unofficial and etc,

Since 草 is composed of 艹 and 早. then it is not a surprise that 草 (pronounces cǎo) which is quite close to 早 (pronounces zǎo). Besides the meaning we explained above, 早 also serves as the phonetic part of 草.

That is all, now it is time to enjoy a Chinese calligraphy with 草 inside to end our lesson today:

山抹微云，天连衰草