What is the origin of the word 鬻?

Question

The word 鬻 (yù) appears to originate as a joint pictogram from:

• 粥 depicting the rice and two whirls of steam on the sides
• 鬲 (pronounced lì?) a cooking vessel

Later 粥 alone came in use to express the original meaning (congee), and 鬻 became a loan for "to sell". The loan is reported in the Zhuangzi 庄子.

However I've always known that the actual meaning of this word is "to sell poetry for a living", which is basically the translation of the idiom 鬻文为生. This idiom is also the only sentence where I ever heard the character 鬻 (heard, yes, I actually heard someone uttering this). The dictionaries I checked report only 卖 as a synonym, and other usages consistent with "selling", but the offered examples all gravitate toward "selling art" as 鬻画, 鬻哥 where it looks like a separable verb.

Given the highly specific collocations, I wonder if there is a story behind the etymology of the word, e.g. the same way there is a story behind a chengyu like 画蛇添足。I couldn't find any so far.

Answer 1

You'd better refer to these links: https://www.zhihu.com/question/20010669/answer/26173785

https://www.zhihu.com/question/22107477/answer/20311667

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%AC%BB#Etymology

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%F0%A7%B6%A0#Chinese

1. The word {congee} was first denoted by (here 毓 denotes its pronunciation and 䰜 stands for cooking utensils) and later the character developed into 鬻(鬻≠粥+鬲，鬻=米+䰜). Finally it was simplified to 粥.

2. Both 粥 and 鬻 could be used to denote the word {sell}. As dROOOze pointed out, this use is nothing but a phonetic loan for 𧸇. 𧸇 stills exists as a phonetic complement in many characters like 續贖讀櫝 (its glyph form becomes resembling 賣mài but they are etymologically unrelated).

As the history developed the usage of 鬻 to mean {sell} was fixed and 粥 became only used to mean {congee}.

3. The use of 鬻 to mean {sell} is seen as traditional Chinese today and hence only appears in idiomatic uses.

Examples in ancient Chinese:

楚人有鬻楯與矛者。 There was a person in Chu state who was selling shields and lances.

我世世為洴澼絖，不過數金；今一朝而鬻技百金，請與之。We have been bleaching cocoon-silk for generations, and have only gained a little money. Now in one morning (=at once, immediately) we can sell [to this man] our art (the way to make a salve which kept the hands from getting chapped) for a hundred ounces - let me give (sell the art) to him(=let him have it).