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Ideogrammic compound (會意 / 会意) and phono-semantic compound (形聲 / 形声, OC*hliʔ, *hri): phonetic 尸(OC*hli, “body”) + semantic 米(“rice”). The 米 component was originally three (, representing 小, as seen in ), four (, representing 少) or five dots (as seen in ) forming a ideogrammic representation of faeces in the oracle bone script, with four dots being the most common variant, thus representing a man defecating with faeces coming out of the backside. The Shang dynasty variants saw the 尸 ("body") component interchangeable with 人 ("human"); later, by the Western Zhou dynasty, 尸 variants with four dots became the dominant and sole-surviving form, however examples from this time period also exist where the 尸 component is mistaken for 尾 ("tail"), as seen in . During the Warring States period, the 少 component became corrupted into 米.
Shuowen Jiezi does not feature the 屎 character, however it does contain 𦳊 and 𡕝. 𦳊 is listed in Shuowen as deriving from 艸 ("grass") and 胃 ("stomach"), while 𡲴 is listed as the ancient form of 徙 (“migration”), however in reality this is not the case; 𡲴 is an erroneous form of the 屎 variant containing 尾, where the tail portion of the 尾 component is mistakenly written as 火. During the Zhou dynasty, 屎 was often used as a phonetic borrowing for 徙 (OC*selʔ); moreover, during the Warring States period, the Chu script character for 徙 consisted of 屎 with an additional 辵 (modern radical form 辶) added to represent the meaning of walking.
Following transition to the clerical script, a variety of alternative forms emerged:
The 米 component was replaced with phonetic component 矢 (OC*hliʔ) thus creating the variant form 𡱁;
Some variants added another 米 radical to create 𥻐 and 𥺶;
Existing variants containing the 尾 component became 𡲔 and 𡱵;
The body portion of 𡲴 also became further corrupted into 夂 (zhǐ), creating 𡕝;
The tail portion of 尾-based variants became corrupted into 巛, creating 𡲑;
↑ 1.01.1Li Shoukui (李守奎) (2015 April) ““屎”與“徙之古文”考 ”, in 出土文獻, volume 6, Tsinghua University, archived from the original on 11 January 2021, pages 154-162
This is not considered as profane as the English glosses. For instance, a child of five using the Japanese interjection kuso would be unremarkable, whereas it would be very socially inappropriate for a child of five to use the English interjection shit.