Character difference between 'buy' and 'sell'

Question

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'?

The two does not pronounce the same. 买(mǎi) and 卖(mài) are different. — iBug, Aug 25 '17 at 11:48
Possible duplicate of Mnemonic for differentiating 买 and 卖 — , Aug 25 '17 at 14:18

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 17 '20 at 09:50

4

The original form of the top part of 賣 is 出.

《說文》

作。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，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》

edited Jun 17 '20 at 09:50

Community

1

answered Aug 25 '17 at 12:37

SLS

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Is the first character bone script? – udidosa Aug 26 '17 at 11:56
It's noted below the word, 《说文》小篆, which is 《说文解字》小篆体, small seal script. – SLS Aug 26 '17 at 12:33

score -2 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 25 '17 at 13:32

-2

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"

answered Aug 25 '17 at 13:32

LONG

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Character difference between 'buy' and 'sell'

2 Answers2