祝鲠祝噎

祝鲠祝噎 in English

zhù gěng zhù yē: (idiom) In ancient times, rulers showed respect and care for retired elderly people by serving them food and wine and having people pray that they would not choke or gag.

Character breakdown

祝 zhù to pray for
鲠鯁 gěng to choke on a piece of food
噎 yē to choke (on)

How it used to be written

祝

Oracle bone script 商
Clerical script 東漢
See all 18 forms

鲠

These are the forms of 鯁, the traditional character: 鲠 is a twentieth-century simplification, found in no ancient corpus.

Small seal script

噎

Small seal script
Clerical script 西晉

Forms, sources and dates: the 字形演變 database of 小學堂, Academia Sinica, public domain (CC0).

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