May 12, 2010
1 note

虫 and 蟲

蟲 むし ジュウ、チュウ bug, worm

Everyone knows the character 虫, but what about its rare cousin 蟲? The two have sort of a tangled relationship.

虫 was originally pronounced キ used to represent the mamushi (pitviper), as well as being more broadly applied to reptiles. 蟲 was derived from 虫, pronounced チュウ, and used to represent bugs and insects. However, 虫 also became a common abbreviation or variation of 蟲 as well as replacing it in simplified Chinese writing.

蟲 still shows up in a few places, such as in 鳥蟲書 (ちょうちゅうしょ), a rare and particularly ornamental variant of seal script, sometimes called “bird-and-worm script” in English. Another place you might have seen it is in the title of a manga series called 蟲師.

Example of Bird-and-Worm Script
Photo Credit: 三上勝生 (Masao Mikami)

Blog comments powered by Disqus

  1. kanjicabinet posted this
About
A brief blog dedicated to kanji wherever they may be found — and unusual characters in particular. To contact the author, Paul Davidson, write to paul@ideogramme.ca. Tag cloud: If you view this site in IE, the Japanese fonts probably look like crap. I recommend a modern browser like Firefox or Safari. Subscribe via RSS.