象

This character is an ideograph modeled on the elephant, which once lived in the Yellow River basin in ancient times and was known to the early Chinese.

The ⺈ at the top represents the elephant’s trunk; the square in the middle represents the head; and the lower part, resembling 豕 (“pig”), represents the elephant’s four legs and tail — altogether depicting an elephant seen standing.

Over time, the character also came to mean “appearance, form, likeness.” This is seen in the very word for pictographs, which uses 象 itself.

The meaning “to imitate” has a cultural background: as elephants disappeared from much of China due to habitat destruction, people rarely saw living elephants. Instead, they obtained elephant bones, drew images based on them, and imagined what a living elephant looked like.

From this practice arose the figurative sense of 象 as “that which is envisioned in the mind,” giving rise to the idiom 견골상상 (見骨想象) — “seeing bones and imagining the elephant.”

Thus, while its root meaning is “elephant,” in Korean and Chinese cultural vocabulary it is far more frequently used in the extended sense of form, image, representation, phenomenon.

가상 (假象) – appearance, illusion

구상 (具象) – concrete image

기상 (氣象) – weather; atmosphere; spirit

대상 (對象) – object, target, counterpart

만상 (萬象) – myriad phenomena, “all creation”

사상 (事象) – event, phenomenon

상아 (象牙) – ivory (lit. elephant’s tusk)

상징 (象徵) – symbol

상형 (象形) – pictograph

심상 (心象) – mental image

인상 (印象) – impression

추상 (抽象) – abstraction

표상 (表象) – representation, image

현상 (現象) – phenomenon

형상 (形象) – shape, form, figure

There are also regional script variations: in mainland China, the short vertical stroke inside the 口 is written at a slant and connected with the second stroke of 豕, while in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong it remains upright and separate.