Explore each form from the oldest known stage to today.
The character 乳 depicts a mother holding a child to her breast to nurse. In its earliest oracle bone script forms, it showed a kneeling or seated woman with a child in her arms, with dots or lines indicating milk. The character evolved through bronze script and seal script, gradually simplifying while retaining the core elements of woman/child and milk. The modern form 乳 clearly shows the components: 乚 (curved form representing the mother's body), 丶 (the nipple), and 子 (child). The character's primary meaning has always been 'milk', 'breast', or 'to nurse', extending metaphorically to concepts of nurturing, infancy, and anything in a early, formative stage. Arrived in Japan: The character 乳 likely arrived in Japan during the 5th-6th centuries CE along with the broader introduction of Chinese writing system through Buddhist texts and Korean scribes. It appears in early Japanese documents like the 8th century Man'yōshū poetry anthology, where it was used both for its meaning and in phonetic transcriptions of Japanese words.