臼

Our new character today is 臼. It is quite clueless to us what could be its meaning by looking at 臼 itself. Shall its ancient scripts help us to reason its meaning (image taken from http://vividict.com)?

Evolution history of 臼

 Its earliest script we can found is its Bronze script: , we can see that  is a kind of container with grooves engraved on its inside surface.  Something like:

石臼

Seal script  and Clerical script  starts to transform to be finalized to our current form: 臼.

<<说文解字>>   tells us that 臼 is what Chinese people made to grind grains inside. Usually made of wood or stone. For example: 石臼.

grinding grains

And after Anatomy was introduced into China, Chinese started to use 臼 to describe the joints of bones due to its similarity. For example 骨头脱臼.

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

张瞻炊臼，庄周鼓盆。