猜

猜 is a phono-semantic compound combining:

犬 (개 견) — the semantic element meaning dog, symbolizing animal instinct, alertness, and suspicion.

靑 (푸를 청) — the phonetic component, giving the pronunciation cāi and connoting a mental or visual clarity.

The ancient image suggests a watchful dog reacting to something uncertain, representing uneasy alertness — hence “to be suspicious.”

From this emotional nuance arose the rational sense “to guess” — a mental act of probing the unknown.

猜忌 (시기) — jealousy, mutual suspicion

猜疑 (시의) — suspicion, doubt

猜測 (시측) — conjecture, speculation

猜想 (시상) — supposition, hypothesis

猜拳 (시권) — the hand-game “rock-paper-scissors” (lit. “guessing fists”)

In early Chinese metaphor, the dog (犬) often represented vigilance or protective suspicion.

Thus, 猜 describes a heart that guards itself like a watchful dog, alert to hidden motives — a vivid image of human caution.

By the Han dynasty, 猜 expanded from emotional jealousy to intellectual inference.

To 猜測 was not to distrust, but to explore the unknown through intuition — the mental parallel to a dog’s alert sense of smell.

In this way, 猜 bridges emotion and reason, instinct and cognition — expressing the transition from feeling suspicion to forming a hypothesis.

Confucian and Buddhist texts sometimes treat 猜忌 (“jealous suspicion”) as a moral failing — a restless heart that cannot trust others.

In contrast, 猜測 (“to surmise”) became a neutral intellectual verb in philosophy and literature, reflecting curiosity and discernment.

In modern Chinese, 猜 most commonly means “to guess”, as in 猜謎 (to solve riddles) or 猜拳 (to play rock-paper-scissors).

Its emotional sense of “jealousy” survives mainly in set phrases such as 猜忌, echoing the older moral tone of guarded mistrust.