About
The character 舀 is an ideogram depicting the action of scooping or ladling substances from a container. Its upper portion features the claw radical 爫, a variant of the hand symbol, representing the manual effort involved. The lower portion is the character 臼, originally meaning mortar, which here signifies any basin or deep receptacle holding the material. This structure, a hand reaching into a container, clearly illustrates its meaning of extracting liquids or loose materials with a tool, a sense consistent throughout its history.
Etymology Hide
