Sinograph Addenda · Signs

曰say · yuē · to say — the quotation-opener of the classical books

say

Where it comes from

A mouth with a short stroke of breath leaving it, by the received account — the tradition’s opening quotation mark with a voice. Nearly five million attestations in the classical corpus, virtually all of them opening speech. Taught in the master’s chapter.

How to remember it

Wider than tall, its inner stroke stopping short of the wall — that shortfall is the breath still leaving the mouth. Say, and everything after it is quotation. (The sun 日sun · rì · the sun; a day is tall and closed; this is how you tell them apart.)

In the wild