About
The character 洎 is composed of the water radical 氵 combined with the phonetic and semantic component 自, which originally depicted a nose and conveyed notions of self or origin. Its earliest attested meaning was "to ladle out" or "to skim water", a sense directly tied to its liquid radical. This concrete meaning later extended to the more abstract verbal sense of "to reach" or "to arrive at", and subsequently solidified into its primary function in classical texts as a preposition meaning "until" or "up to". In some early usages, it also served as a conjunction equivalent to "and" or "as well as", linking it to the concept of addition or inclusion.
Etymology Hide
