Learn one Chinese Character a day - 驭 | 馭

From today onwards, we start to pick up some of the low hanging fruits in Chinese character vocabulary . Our character today is 驭, whose Traditional version is 馭.

We have already learnt the character 马 is a drawing of horse, and original meaning of 又 is hand.

So what is the meaning of 驭 then? A natural guess would be "use hand (又) to control a horse (马)". As shown in below the pictures:

A recent photo:

驭马

 And a ancient Chinese drawing:

驭马图

We can double confirm our guessing with its evolution history: (image taken from:http://vividict.com)

evolution history of 驭 | 馭

Looking at its Bronze Script , we can see that it is composed of (马) and .  is drawing of "a hand holding something". Since it is related to 马, that something must be horsewhip. Below is a modern art which uses metal to represent .

驭

 When it came to Seal Script,  is simplified to , with its  simplified to . Amazingly the simplified Seal Script presents the meaning of  even better.

驭 | 馭 is thus the continual version of .

驭 | 馭 means "use hand to control a horse", for example 驾驭

For 驭 | 馭 has the meaning of control, it is then eventually used to mean "to control, to manage, to rule, or to supervise". for example: 统驭, 以简驭繁

That is all, now let us enjoy a Chinese calligraphy with 驭 | 馭 inside:

长辔远驭