The classical line describes the steady tread in red ceremonial shoes.
Tips
history
舄 is not used in modern Chinese. It named the most formal wood-soled shoe of kings and high officials; the line quoted is from the Book of Songs. By loan it also wrote magpie and salt-marsh. It now survives chiefly as the phonetic in 潟 (lagoon, tidal flat).
register
Classical only - encountered in old ritual texts and etymology, never in modern speech.
Components
pictograph
舄xì
ceremonial shoe; magpie
Treated as a single picture: originally the drawing of a magpie, with a 臼-like top and a wrapped 勹 body over four-dot feet 灬. Indexed under Kangxi radical 臼. It is the phonetic in 潟.
Filed under radical 臼 (jiù, #134) by convention. 臼 is not a separate component in 舄, so no strokes are highlighted.
