Learn Chinese Characters 106 雷

By Caren Zuo

雷(léi)



The character have different forms in different periods, which reflects people’s different recognition to "thunder". The oracle script (the first one) has two small squares on both sides, the part in the middle is the writing form of character “电” (meaning lightning) in oracle script. The bronzeware script (the second one) has the character “雨” on the above, which reflects that people at that time had learned that “thunder” and “rain” would appear together. The seal script (the third one) omits the component representing “lighting” and keeps three “田” on the below. Here “田” has nothing to do with “field”, and it is the signal for “thunder”. The last one is regular script, which consists of the character “雨” on the above and “田” on the below.The character “雷” let us think of “a thunder in the rainstorm”.

雷 （thunder）= 雨（a semantic part meaning rain）+
                         田（a semantic part sketching figures of thunder）

Useful Phrases:

打雷(dǎ léi) thunder