0080 葉

葉

This character means ‘leaf.’ It’s pronounced YŌ and ha or happa in Japanese, and yè in Chinese.

The upper part,

艹,

stands for ‘grass,’

and the lower part,

木,

is the familiar character for ‘tree.’

The bit in the middle,

世,

means ‘generation, world, society, era, life.’ It and the tree are actually just there as a sound hint, but one can put all the parts together—grass, tree, and life—and maybe that will remind one of ‘leaf.’

However, another way to deal with this character is by looking at the archaic versions:

  .

It sure looks like those are trees...with leaves. And the bit that now means ‘generation, world, etc.,’ in the middle, just looks like the branches of the trees. And the ‘grass’ on top also just looks like leaves. Sometimes it seems like scribes over the centuries tended to regularize these older pictures by drawing them as if they were made of pieces which (today?) have other meanings. Or maybe those branches ‘generate’ the leaves.