色

Ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 爪 (“claw; hand”) + 卩 (“kneeling person”). It depicts a hand pressing down on a kneeling person. 色 was an ancient form of 印; they both originally meant "to press down", meaning now written with 抑. The character was later borrowed phonetically to mean "color".

Shuowen interprets this character as an ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 人 (“person; human”) + 卪, which refers to the expression, vitality or complexion of a person's face.

Sometimes, especially in folk etymology, the character is misinterpreted as a proto-form of 絕. The bottom part is unrelated to 巴.

Possibly from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *srək (“ashamed; shy”), whence Burmese ရှက် (hrak, “ashamed; shy”), Japhug tɤ-zraʁ (“shame”) (Schuessler, 2007; Jacques, 2015b).

Alternatively, Schuessler (2007) connects this word to Mizo sâr (“prismatic colours seen in the sky in fine weather; to be healthy-looking, ruddy”), which would point to a form *sər-k from which the Old Chinese was derived.

彩 (OC *s.r̥ˤəʔ, “colour”) may be a dialectal variant (Baxter, 1992; Baxter and Sagart, 2014).