牍 (dú): documents; correspondence

Meanings

1 documents; correspondence
2 ancient wooden writing tablet

Characters

牍

dú

document; wooden writing slip

Examples

这位官员终日埋于案牍之中。

Zhè wèi guānyuán zhōngrì mái yú àndú zhī zhōng.

The official drowned in mountains of paperwork.

汉代的简牍是珍贵的历史资料。

Hàndài de jiǎn dú shì zhēnguì de lìshǐ zīliào.

Han-era bamboo and wooden tablets are precious historical materials.

无案牍之劳形。

Wú àndú zhī láo xíng.

There are no documents to torment my body and mind.

Tips

usage

Surviving compounds: 案牍 (paperwork on the official's desk, famous from 刘禹锡's 《陋室铭》), 简牍 (bamboo and wooden slips — the everyday writing surface before paper), 尺牍 (foot-long writing slips → personal correspondence).

history

Pre-Han documents were written on bamboo strips (简) for short notes and wider wooden boards (牍) for longer ones. Archaeologists call this whole pre-paper corpus the 简牍 period — the Juyan, Mawangdui and Yinwan finds are the canonical caches that re-wrote early Han history when they were excavated.

register

Literary register. Modern speech uses 文件 (document) or 公文 (official paperwork). 牍 survives mostly in fixed phrases and archaeology.

Components

radical

片 piàn

slice; slip of wood

Left 片 (Kangxi #91) — a wooden slip. Anchors the meaning in the physical writing material: this character names a specific kind of 片 — wider than 牒, thicker than 札.

phonetic

卖 mài

phonetic element

Right side is the simplified phonetic — the traditional form had the fuller 賣 phonetic component (NOT the modern 'sell' character, but the older 'reveal' element with reading yù), drifting to dú here. The 1956 reform replaced it with the shape now seen in 卖, 读, 续. Same phonetic series.