Sinograph Addenda · Signs

direction

Name	direction
Reads	fāng
Means	direction, quarter, region; square; method
Taught in	09 · The art of asking

Where it comes from

Genuinely disputed: a plough’s cross-bar, a boat’s prow, a carrying-yoke — the early graphs support several stories and the course does not pick a winner. The WORD is not disputed: a quarter of the world (四方, the four quarters), a direction, a region, and later a method — the shape of “which way?” frozen into writing. Taught in the asking chapter.

How to remember it

Read it as a pennant on its pole, streaming one way: look where it points — a direction, one of the four quarters.

In the wild

使於四方。shǐ yú sì fāng"sent to the four quarters" — what an officer must be fit for, says the Master: a mission anywhere under heaven

Analects 13.20 — from the same answer the officer's codex page reads. urn:nabu:kanripo:KR1h0004:013:30a · license: attribution.