0018 流

流

This is the character that means ‘to flow,’ nagareru in Japanese, liú in Chinese. It’s not hard to see why. The element on the left is an abbreviation for

水

which means ‘water.’ The element on the bottom right looks like a pretty literal representation of a flowing river. Here’s ‘river’:

川.

However, we are told that the element on the right

㐬

is a cup with pendants. I want one of those for drinking my kvass. This element is just there for phonetic reasons. We’re also told, though, that you can think of it as a man, head-down, being dragged by his hair down a flowing river. And that is what the archaic character looks like:

.

Aaaaayeeeeeee!