Learn one Chinese character a day - 删 | 刪

Today we continue to examine a new character related to 册, which is 删, whose traditional version is 刪.

We have learnt that 册 means books written on bamboo flakes, and刂 means knife (刀), so what is the aggregated meaning of 删?

Using knife to do something to the books made of bamboo flakes? As we have know that Chinese ancestors used brush for writing, as shown below:

Kids writing on bamboo flakes using brush

Since knife is not used to write, it is used to scratch out those wrong or redundant characters.

So 删 means delete or remove.

Let us check its evolution history to confirm our reasoning: (image taken from http://vividict.com)

删

We can see from its Oracle script  (, which is 册 plus ， which is 刀) that its representation has not been changed along history.

That is all for today, let us enjoy a Chinese calligraphy with 删 inside:

画前原有易，
删后更无诗。

Learn one Chinese Character a day - 匾

As we have mentioned in our previous post, 扁 is borrowed to mean wide and thin, thus a new character has been created to represent its original meaning. Chinese ancestors were very smart by adding a frame to 扁 to create 匾 instead.

门匾

匾 means inscribed board on door or wall, usually made by either wood or bamboo.

That is all for today.