豊 (lǐ) · ceremonial vessel for ritual offerings

Meanings

1 ceremonial vessel for ritual offerings
2 variant of 禮 / 礼; ritual; ceremony

Characters

豊

lǐ

ritual vessel

Examples

HSK 7-9

在甲骨文中，豊字描绘了盛放玉和谷物祭品的礼器。

Zài jiǎgǔwén zhōng, lǐ zì miáohuì le chéngfàng yù hé gǔwù jìpǐn de lǐqì.

On oracle bones, this character depicts a ceremonial vessel holding jade and grain offerings.

HSK 7-9

豊是礼的古字，后来才加上示旁以强调祭祀之义。

Lǐ shì lǐ de gǔzì, hòulái cái jiā shàng shì páng yǐ qiángdiào jìsì zhī yì.

豊 is the ancient form of 禮; the radical 礻 was added later to make the ritual sense explicit.

Tips

register

豊 is archaic - it does not appear in modern Mandarin outside of paleography, etymology discussions, and the occasional personal name. The modern character for 'ritual / ceremony / propriety' is 礼 (simplified) / 禮 (traditional). Use those in any real-world context. 豊 appears only when a writer wants to evoke the original pictographic form, e.g. in scholarly works on oracle-bone script.

history

On oracle bones, 豊 shows a 豆 (high-stemmed ritual vessel) with offerings - usually two strings of jade - piled on top. From this concrete picture of a sacrificial display the meaning extended to the whole sphere of ritual conduct. When ritual became an abstract category, scribes added 示 (altar) to disambiguate the abstract sense, yielding 禮. 豊 also has a rare fēng reading as a graphic variant of 豐 / 丰 (abundant), but this usage is essentially limited to historical philology.

Components

pictograph

豊 lǐ

ritual vessel piled with offerings

Pictograph of a 豆 ritual stem-vessel (the bottom seven strokes) supporting ceremonial offerings (the top six strokes, originally two strings of jade flanking an altar marker). The whole graph shows a sacrificial display at the moment of offering. This is the original character; 示 was added later to give 禮 (ritual). Indexed under Kangxi #151 豆.

Filed under radical 豆 (dòu, #151) by convention. 豆 is not a separate component in 豊, so no strokes are highlighted.