The characters for 'buy' and 'sell', seem to have a subtle difference in the character.
- 買/买 (buy)
- 賣/卖 (sell)
I want to know, what's the significance of the radial on top of the sell? How does adding that change 'buy' into 'sell'?
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1The two does not pronounce the same. 买(mǎi) and 卖(mài) are different.– iBugCommented Aug 25, 2017 at 11:48
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2Possible duplicate of Mnemonic for differentiating 买 and 卖– user4072Commented Aug 25, 2017 at 14:18
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check 字源字形 of zdic.net– Daniel YangCommented Aug 28, 2017 at 23:33
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2 Answers
The original form of the top part of 賣 is 出.
《說文》
作𧷓。出物貨也。从出从買。
出物貨也：
出：拿出 take out
物：物品 goods
貨：交易 to trade
買
《說文》
作𧵽，市也。
市：做買賣。to trade
「買」本指商品交易，兼有「買、賣」二義，後來專指交易中的買入。
買 refers to the commodity trading activities, both "to buy and to sell", and later refers specifically to purchase transactions.
source: 《康熙字典》《字源》
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It's noted below the word, 《说文》小篆, which is 《说文解字》小篆体, small seal script.– SLSCommented Aug 26, 2017 at 12:33
Your post has typo,
Should be like:
买/買(buy) 卖/ 賣 (sell)
The former one is the simplified Chinese, the later one is traditional Chinese, the 1st pair simply means "buy" or "purchase", the 2nd pair means "sell"
