Sinograph Addenda · Signs

則rule · zé · rule, pattern; then, in that case

rule

Where it comes from

The knife 刂 beside the cowrie 貝cowrie · bèi · cowrie shell; wealth, value. On the oldest bronzes the right-hand knife cuts into a ritual cauldron, not a shell — the cauldron wore down to a cowrie as the graph was copied — and a standard engraved in metal is a rule. The classical language then made it a hinge: X 則rule · zé · rule, pattern; then, in that case Y, “where X holds, Y follows, as the rule dictates” — the twenty-third most frequent character in the corpus, almost always in that job. Taught in the if-and-then chapter.

How to remember it

Cut beside the treasure: the rule — and “then,” because the rule says what follows.

In the wild