Sinograph Addenda · Signs

故therefore · gù · cause, precedent; old, former; therefore

therefore

Where it comes from

古old · gǔ · old, ancient; antiquity “old” lends both its sound and its sense; the tapping hand 攵 turns it into a happening — the classic build. What stands behind a thing is its precedent; the precedent is its cause; and “from this cause” hardened into the classical hinge-word therefore, the word every argument in the classics turns on. Taught in the and-so chapter.

How to remember it

The old 古old · gǔ · old, ancient; antiquity, hand at work: what was done before is the reason now — therefore.

In the wild