Definitions
to amputate one or both feet (punishment in imperial China) (one of the five mutilating punishments 五刑[wǔ xíng])
About
刖 refers to an ancient form of corporal punishment that involved amputating one or both feet of an offender. Originally a pictograph of a saw cutting off a foot, the character was later reformed into a phonosemantic compound, with 刂 (knife) indicating the cutting implement and 月 (yuè) serving as the phonetic. After the punishment was abolished in subsequent dynasties, 刖 fell out of active use and now only appears in historical texts detailing early Chinese legal practices and their victims.
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