Qi

The etymological explanation for the form of the qi logogram in the traditional form 氣 is “steam (气) rising from rice (米) as it cooks”.

The earliest way of writing qi consisted of three wavy lines, used to represent one's breath seen on a cold day. A later version, 气, (identical to the present-day simplified character) is a stylized version of those same three lines. For some reason, early writers of Chinese found it desirable to substitute for 气 a cognate, character that originally meant to feed other people in a social context such as providing food for guests.^{[citation needed]} Appropriately, that character combined the three-line qi character with the character for rice. So 气 plus 米 formed 氣, and that is the traditional character still used today. (See the Oracle bone character, the Seal script character and the modern "school standard" or Kǎi shū characters in the box at the right for three stages of the evolution of this character.)^[1]

Kanji used in Japan for "ki" until 1946, when it was changed to 気. Koreans maintain the older character in their "hanja".

In the Japanese language, the Chinese character corresponding to qi (氣) is pronounced ki. The Japanese language contains over 11,442 known usages of "ki" as a compound. As a compound, it may represent syllables associated with the mind, the heart, feeling, the atmosphere, and flavor.^{[citation needed]}

Parallel development occurred in the Korean language which uses Chinese characters (hanja) alongside the indigenous Korean system (hangul). There are also some cases in which commonalities are due to the long history of their geographical relationship.^{[citation needed]}