Learn one Chinese Character a day - 渔 | 漁

Since we just learnt 鱼, today we examine a new character related to it - 渔. What does it mean? 

we already know that 氵 means water or river. Combination of Water / River and 鱼 can possibly have following meanings:

a. fish inside water;
b. fish outside water.

Fish inside water does not have any special context. However fish outside water does, especially if it is caught out of water by people.

Let us get more hints from its ancient scripts. below is the evolution history of 渔 (image taken from http://vividict.com/):

evolution history of 渔 | 漁

As we can see from its Oracle script , it is the drawing of ， which is a hand () holding a fishing rod (), to catch fish （）, like a Chinese painting below:

angling

While its another Oracle script is a drawing of hands casting nets () to catch fish ().

Another Oracle script is drawing of fish () outside river (), which is eventually adopted by Seal script  with river moved to left hand side of fish.  is then evolved into the modern form - 渔 | 漁.

So 渔 | 漁 means fishing. For example: 渔夫.

And catching fish means obtaining some benefits, 渔 | 漁 is also used to mean obtain or get as a verb. For example 渔利. Since fishing is to catch fish by force and is against the will of fish, when 渔 | 漁 is used as verb, it is a kind of derogatory term, which contains such hiding meaning of "by force and against the will of other people".

That is all for 渔 | 漁, let us enjoy a Chinese calligraphy with it inside:

渔父笑，轻鸥举，漠漠一江风雨。
江边骑马是官人，借我孤舟南渡。