Explore each form from the oldest known stage to today.
Historical forms are not available yet. The current form is shown as a reference.
"抜" originated as a variant form of the Chinese character 拔. Its formation is a combination of semantic and phonetic elements, classified as a phono-semantic compound (形声文字). The character is composed of the hand radical (扌), indicating an action performed with the hand, and the component 犮 (read as *bat* in Middle Chinese), which serves a dual role. 犮 provides the primary phonetic component, dictating the character's pronunciation, while also contributing semantic value related to "pulling out" or "extracting." The component 犮 itself is pictographic in origin, depicting a dog (犬) with its legs splayed, suggesting the idea of something being pulled apart or separated—a meaning that was extended to the concept of extraction. The core meaning of 抜 is therefore "to pull out" or "to extract," as if using a hand to remove something that is stuck or embedded. Over time in China, the character evolved graphically, with the modern Japanese form 抜 simplifying the right-hand component compared to its traditional Chinese counterpart 拔. This character, along with the broader Chinese writing system, was introduced to Japan via the Korean peninsula around the 5th century AD. It was systematically adopted into the Japanese language as part of the 当て字 method for writing native Japanese words. The kanji 抜 was used to represent the native Japanese verb *nuku*, which independently carried the meanings "to extract" or "to omit," creating a semantic alignment. A notable cultural usage is in the term 抜き (nuki), meaning "without" or "omitting," and in compounds like 抜粋 (bassui), meaning "extract" or "summary," demonstrating how the core concept of removal or selection has been lexically extended.