About
The character 刍 is a simplified form of the traditional 芻, originally depicting hands pulling up bundles of grass or weeds. It means hay, fodder, or freshly cut grass used to feed livestock. In classical texts, 刍 was sometimes used as a humble first-person pronoun or to describe someone of low status, such as those who gathered firewood or cut grass for animals. The simplification significantly reduced the visual complexity of the traditional form, two symmetrical halves representing grass bundles, resulting in a more abstract shape that preserves the agricultural meaning but obscures the original imagery of harvesting plants.
Etymology Hide
