Brothers may quarrel at home, yet together they fend off outside insult.
Tips
history
阋 means to quarrel, and survives almost entirely in the 《诗经》 phrase 兄弟阋于墙 - brothers feud at home but unite against an outside threat. The idiom 阋墙 still names internal strife within a family or group.
The outer wrapper. The traditional form 鬩 used the 'fight' frame; the simplified character reuses the door shape 门 as its indexing radical, enclosing the inner part the way a doorway frames what stands inside it.
phonetic
兒ér
child (phonetic)
The inner part, the traditional form of 儿 (child). In the original character it pointed to a quarrelsome figure; in modern use it works mainly as the sound element, the reading having shifted to xì.
