0026 丘

丘

Can you see two hills in this? Or two men standing back-to-back on top of a hill, from where they can see out to all the four directions? Those are the explanations for this character, meaning ‘hill’ or ‘empty.’ The idea of emptiness comes from the barren quality of the high hills. It’s KYŪ and oka in Japanese, qiū in Chinese.

This ancient version

could certainly be two hills or two men back-to-back.

If you add a tiger (for sound, apparently)

虍,

you get

虛,

which means ‘empty, false, hollow, worthless.’

And if you add a mouth

口’

you get

噓,

which means ‘lie, falsehood, fib,’ which must mean false and empty speech coming from the mouth. Uso in Japanese, xū in Chinese. It’s not too far from the ancient version:

.