What is the meaning of our character today - 寸? Very hard to guess with its current form. Let us see whether we can find some clue from its ancient scripts: (image taken from http://chinese-linguipedia.org/)
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| Learn one Chinese Character a day - 寸 |
As we can see that its Bronze Script or Seal Script 
is to draw an indicator dash 
to a hand 
. What does that mean? When a Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor is seeing her patients, she would check their pulses at their wrist, as shown below.
is to draw an indicator dash to a hand . What does that mean? When a Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor is seeing her patients, she would check their pulses at their wrist, as shown below.  |
| Diagnose by checking pulses |
That position of the wrist where we can feel the pulses is represented as . The distance between this position to palm, which is 寸, is eventually used as a measurement unit. 1 寸 is around 3.33 cm.
As you can see that 3.33cm is a quite short length, 寸 is so used to mean short. If we are talking about size, 寸 is to mean small,
That is all for 寸, we can now enjoy a Chinese calligraphy with 寸 inside:
. The distance between this position to palm, which is 寸, is eventually used as a measurement unit. 1 寸 is around 3.33 cm.As you can see that 3.33cm is a quite short length, 寸 is so used to mean short. If we are talking about size, 寸 is to mean small,
That is all for 寸, we can now enjoy a Chinese calligraphy with 寸 inside:
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| 谁言寸草心，报得三春晖 |
And we have prepared enough information to reason following Chinese character by looking at its Oracle Script:
and Seal Script 
. We will reveal the answer in our next lesson. Please take your time to think about it.
and Seal Script . We will reveal the answer in our next lesson. Please take your time to think about it.
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