手

Pictogram (象形) – hand and fingers. The top stroke is the bent over middle finger, while the horizontal strokes are each two fingers. Compare 爪, 寸, 九, 又, and 彐 as a stylized hand. Compare 丑 as an animal claw. See also the bottom part of 舉 and 奉.

Note that unlike the other hand/claw characters, 手 has consistently had five fingers: a mammalian/human hand, as opposed to the three digits often found in the others.

Compare also 止 (“foot”), derived from a footprint pointing upward, originally composed of 3 toes and a sole.

STEDT compares this word to Proto-Sino-Tibetan *g-(t)sjəw-k/ŋ (“wing; hand”) based on Karlgren's Archaic Chinese (Old Chinese) reconstruction *śi̯ôg, connecting it to Tibetan གཤོག (gshog, “wing”).

However, this comparison is not supported by more recent scholarship, in which the Old Chinese is reconstructed with an alveolar nasal (Unger, 1995; Zhengzhang, 1995; Baxter and Sagart, 2014). Evidence for the nasal initial is given in Sagart (1999):

* 杻 (“handcuffs”) can be written as 杽, so 丑 (OC *ᵇhnruʔ) (with a nasal initial) and 手 seem to be interchangeable as phonetics.

* The ancient graph 丑 resembles the graph of 又 (“right hand”). 狃 (OC *ᵇnruʔ, “animal track; claw”) seems to be the modern specialized form of 丑, which has been borrowed to represent an earthly branch.

As done by Sagart (1999), Baxter and Sagart (2014) put 杻 (OC *n̥uʔ, “handcuffs”) and 狃 (OC *Cə.nuʔ, “animal track; claw”) into the same word family as 手 (OC *n̥uʔ). Zhengzhang (1995) suggests a connection to the ညှိုး (hnyui:) in Burmese လက်ညှိုး (lakhnyui:, “forefinger”), which STEDT derives from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-njuŋ ~ *s-m-juŋ ~ *s-m-juw (“finger”). See Proto-Sino-Tibetan *C-njuʔ (“finger”) for more.

Alternatively, Schuessler (2007) suggests a tone B endoactive derivation from 收 (OC *nhiu?, “to take; to gather”), literally “that which is doing the taking”.