佾 CJK Unified Ideograph-4F7E

What 佾 means

It means an ordered row of dancers in a ritual dance. The trail starts in the Spring and Autumn period: the Zuozhuan records a six-feather offering later glossed as six dance ranks, while the Analects preserves 八佾 in its rebuke of the Ji family. So 佾 is a unit of ceremonial music and dance, not a word for a queue.

Think of 佾 as the counter and 佾舞 as the performance. 八佾, 六佾, 四佾 and 二佾 are historically connected forms whose size signaled status. Old commentaries split two ways: eight dancers per row, or equal rows and columns. Keep that dispute open; do not reduce it to one formula.

Why does 八佾 matter?

It turns choreography into an accusation of overreach. In the Analects, the Ji family stages 八佾 in its own court, and Confucius reads it as stealing a ruler's privilege. When a message quotes 八佾, hear literary side-eye about rank, not a dance review.

The old vocabulary found new stages. Korean 일무 remains part of royal-ancestral and Confucian ceremony, and Taiwan's Palace Museum describes 佾舞 in modern Confucius-temple rites. The Korean, Taiwanese and UNESCO descriptions support the modern ritual continuities described here as of 2026, including Seoul's Jongmyo rite as a living annual ceremony no longer celebrated in China.

Formal, classical and ceremonial; bare 佾 belongs in history or ritual notes, not casual chat.

If you mean an ordinary row, don't use 佾: it means ritual dance and rank.

Who writes 佾

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What it means when someone sends it to you

4 readings

A rare classical noun; ask for the surrounding phrase.

Combination ideas

3

Literary rebuke: someone uses the ruler's ritual dance.

Ordered ceremonial dance in Confucian or court ritual.

Six-rank form; dancer count varies by reconstruction.

Questions people ask

1

Why does 佾 show as a box on some devices?

Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.