What is the character etymology of 着 ? as in []{}. I have tried looking up the kanji at Richard Sear's Chinese Etymology site, Wictionary and other sites. Every one of them points to a variant, but offer no explanation as to why it means wear and write at the same time ? Richard Sear's Chinese Etymology, > Primitive pictograph . From bamboo and words and remnant of bamboo scroll threaded together. Original meaning to write. Wictionary, > This character, , is the simplified and variant traditional form of All I know is that the top part of the kanji is grass radical according to wictionary and rest of the part is a phonetic. Why does the same Kanji mean wear and write ? Where can I find more information about how the kanji evolved to mean seemingly unrelated things ? Why Japanese only took the meaning related to wearing something and dropped the meaning which means to write?

The "wear" and "write" definitions of are in fact different words (and we don't use the kanji for "wear" anymore). Moreover, as you said, the true old form has the Bamboo radical on the head, in other words, is today's . The kanji is made of and , where indicates the pronunciation. Thus this kanji once became a carpool of several similar-sounding words.

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* {HL} (OC [_*[d]rak-s_]( "chopsticks" → today's ****
* (OC _*trak-s_): "to write, to author, written, evident" → ****
* {LH}[]{HL} (OC _*m-trak_): "put on, turn on, get on" → ****



Note that the distinction of and is tradition in Japan and PRC. Taiwan only recognizes as the proper form for both.

was originally handwriting variant of . The top part was a common variation of (; radical Grass on the top) now becomes non-standard.

![enter image description here](
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