About
The character "窜" in its modern simplified form carries a meaning of rushing about, fleeing, or being altered for illicit purposes, which reflects a distillation of its more complex historical trajectory. Its traditional counterpart, "竄", is etymologically revealing, being composed of the elements 穴 (cave) and 鼠 (rat), graphically depicting a rat scurrying into a hole to hide, thus establishing its original sense of flight, concealment, or exile. Over time, this literal sense of physical hiding or banishment expanded into more abstract and active applications, such as the idea of hastily running to and fro or, in a literary sense, the unauthorized alteration of a text. The structural simplification replaced the specific pictorial component of the rat (鼠) with the more generic 串, a character associated with stringing things together or linking, which arguably shifts the visual metaphor from a specific creature’s hiding to a more generalized notion of threaded, rapid, or chaotic movement while retaining the overarching concept of motion away from a source or norm.
Etymology Hide
Example Sentences Hide
老鼠突然窜出来。
小偷窜逃进了小巷。
匪徒流窜多个省份。
他窜改了重要文件。
消息很快窜遍了全村。
这股热潮窜升得很快。
犯罪分子四处流窜作案。
他的文章被编辑点窜过。