祭

See also 示

Translingual

Etymology

Ideogrammic compound (會意): ⺼ (“meat”) + 手 (“hand”) + 示 (“altar, ceremony”) – the hand offers a piece of meat at the altar during a ceremony.

Note that the top is not 癶. The left part is ⺼ twisted to the left (compare 將, 然). The right part (which looks like 又 without the tail to the left) actually a simplified form of hand, which was written originally like 屮 (three fingers on the arm), with the tail tilted to the right and the leftmost fingers disappearing).

In Japanese handwriting, the diagonals of the upper right component cross: the short upper-right to lower-left stroke crosses the long upper-left to lower-right stroke, rather than abutting there.

Han character

祭 (radical 113 示+6, 11 strokes, cangjie input 月人一一火 (BOMMF), four-corner 2790₁)

1. make offerings to, sacrifice to, worship
2. ceremonial

Derived characters

• 瘵, 㡜, 際, 察, 蔡, 穄
• Simplification: 示, as part of some compounds (際 → 际)

References

• KangXi: page 843, character 7
• Dai Kanwa Jiten: character 24700
• Dae Jaweon: page 1263, character 8
• Hanyu Da Zidian: volume 4, page 2397, character 7
• Unihan data for U+796D

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Cantonese

Hanzi

祭 (Yale jai3)

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Japanese

Kanji

祭 (grade 3 “Kyōiku” kanji)

Readings

• On: さい (sai)
• Kun: まつる (matsuru), まつり (matsuri)

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Korean

Hanja

祭 (hangeul 제, 채, revised je, chae, McCune-Reischauer che, ch'ae, Yale cey, chay)

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Mandarin

Hanzi

祭 (pinyin jì (ji4), Wade-Giles chi⁴)