店
This character means ‘shop, store,’ and is pronounced TEN or mise in Japanese and dìan in Chinese.
The outer figure
广
represents a hut, shed, or shop, according to Wieger. The inner figure
占
is only there to provide a phonetic hint. It means ‘to hold, occupy’ in Japanese, but in Chinese (and Japanese, too) it means ‘to tell fortunes.’ I'm guessing that the upper two perpendicular lines represent the crack that appear when tortoise shells are roasted for divination, as we learned in an earlier post. The mouth below is probably uttering the prophesy.
For learning today’s character, perhaps it would help to remember the phrase ‘hold down the shop’ in order to learn two characters at the same time. Alternatively, this might be a fortune-teller’s shop.
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