HSK Guide

部首 25divination; to foretell, prophesy

(third tone, dipping)

divination; to foretell, prophesy

部首 252 画0 汉字

Where the shape comes from

The crack that split a heated tortoise shell or ox bone when the diviners of the Shang court read the future in it — the very ritual that produced the oracle bone script this whole system descends from. A diviner’s reading of the crack, spoken aloud, gives 占, to divine and later to occupy; a divination performed at the wrong time, in the evening rather than the morning, gives 外, outside, the sense drifting from irregular to external.

汉字 filed under

No published character on HSK Guide is filed under this radical yet. 汉字库.