0084 指

指

This character means ‘finger (also ‘toe’ in Chinese), point to.’ It’s pronounced yubi (finger) and sasu in Japanese; zhǐ in Chinese.

The figure on the left is a simplified version of the character for ‘hand’:

手.

The right-hand portion

旨

means ‘purpose, meaning, excellent, skillful,’ but it’s there just as a sound clue. Originally it signified a person

匕

who speaks

曰 ,

meaning ‘an imperial decree,’ and looked more like this:

 .

(Please ignore the fact that 匕 now means ‘spoon,’ rather than ‘man,’ and that 日 means ‘day, sun.’)

Perhaps we can think of the purpose of the hands being excellently and skillfully implemented by the fingers, our target word.