Chinese Radicals Series卜bǔ
- Posted by NIHAO
- Categories Chinese Radicals Series
- Date 2020-10-24
- Comments 0 comment
The word 卜 means ‘to the divine’. In the Shang dynasty, more than 3,000 years ago, the people consulted the gods about a lot of things by heating the shoulder-blades of oxen or tortoise shells over fore until cracks appeared. The pictogram of this word represents such a crack.
The word 卜 can be used in phrases meaning ‘to divine’, for example, 占卜 (zhānbǔ, ’to divine’),卜卦 (bǔguà, ‘to divine using the Eight Trigrams’).
卜 can also be used as a component in word formation, mostly to indicate pronunciation, for example, 补 (bǔ, ‘to patch’), 赴 (fù, ’to attend’) and 讣 (fǔ, ‘obituary’). These words generally do not convey the original meaning of 卜.
Idioms and phrases
卜辞 bǔcí
The message supposedly revealed by the gods in divination
卜居 bǔjū
To divine whether a house is suitable for living in
卜算 bǔsuàn
To foretell by divining
生死未卜 shēngsǐwèibǔ
Not knowing whether someone is alive or dead.
You may also like

Chinese Radicals Series父fù

Chinese Radicals Series非fēi
