A short entry on 歺 and 歹
The development of the character 歹 might be a bit confusing. Earlier it was written as 歺, but later as 歹. As a result of that it merged with another character that was identical in shape. In other words, the graph 歹 came to be used for two different words that originally were written slightly differently.¹
The original word written with 歺 was in Chinese at one time pronounced è, probably with the meaning ‘corpse’, while the Chinese word 歹 dǎi has the meaning ‘bad, wicked, evil’.
The meaning of 歺 is still visible in characters which also contain that element, such as 死 ‘to die’ and 殘 (originally ‘to harm; cruel’). Note that the modern forms of characters that contain 歺 as a component also standardize 歺 as 歹.
歹 in its meaning of ‘bad’ on the other hand, shows up in Chinese word compounds like 歹意 dǎiyì ‘malicious intent’.
In Japanese, there appear to be no existing compound words using 歹, except in reference to its role as a radical (部首, bushu). Those words (歹偏 gatsuhen, ‘bare bone’ signific at the left; 歹部 gatsubu, the characters listed under the bushu 歹) simply point to 歹 as an element in a character and have no real meaning otherwise.
According to Qiú Xīguī, 歹 dǎi appeared somewhere around the start of the 13th century. It may have been loaned from Mongolian. If correct, 歹 dǎi is perhaps unique in being loaned both as word and as written symbol. Mongolian was at that time written using the Tibetan alphabet, in which [ta] was written ཏ, which looked a bit like 歹. This same shape was used to standardize 歺, resulting in a merger.²
歺 goes back to the period of the oracle bone script with the meaning of ‘bones of a dead person’. Ochiai thinks that it represents a shoulder blade.³ Looking at pictures and drawings of shoulder blades, I suppose that’s possible (the hook at the top could be the coracoid process) but even in its oracle bone script shape the graph is already very abstract, and unrecognisable without being told what it is supposed to depict. Below are pictures of oracle bone script versions of 歺:
In some variants the top part 卜 looks a lot like the 卜 on top of 占 (‘divination’; there 卜 depicts the cracks in the divination bones). If Ochiai is correct that must be coincidence, or perhaps stylistic convergence.
Notes
References
- Ochiai (2011) 甲骨文字小字典 (Small character dictionary of Oracle bone characters) 落合淳思 Ochiai Atsushi. 筑摩書房 Chikuma Shobō. Tōkyō, 2011.
- Qiú (2000) Chinese Writing 文字學概要, Qiu Xigui 裘锡圭 (Translated by Gilbert L. Mattos and Jerry Norman). The society for the study of early China & The institute of east asian studies, university of California, Berkeley. Birdtrack Press. New Haven, 2000.