Origin

This character appears to show a hand or arm (the left strokes) holding or wielding a weapon or tool called a ge (戈), which was a Chinese halberd. The image of someone grasping a weapon came to represent personal power and possession, which naturally extended to mean "I" or "myself" — the person speaking or acting. Over time, the meaning shifted from the concrete image of a person with a weapon to the abstract concept of the self or ego. The original pictorial quality faded as the character was standardized, but the association with personal identity remained.

AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Compound ideographic (combined meanings).