Chinese character 忾

The surrounding words choose between hostility and a sigh.

The idiom 同仇敌忾 means people unite in anger against a common enemy. In the Book of Songs, an early Chinese poetry collection, the traditional form 愾 describes someone waking and sighing while thinking of the Zhou dynasty’s capital.

Why can 忾 mean hostility and a sigh?

Its early written examples already show both senses.

The earliest known written example of its traditional form, 愾, is in the received pre-Qin Book of Songs, an early Chinese poetry collection: a speaker wakes, sighs, and thinks of the Zhou dynasty’s capital. The poem’s traditional preface presents it as people of the state of Cao lamenting harsh rule and longing for a wise ruler. The Eastern Han dictionary Shuowen Jiezi defines 愾 as a great sigh and quotes the verse.

A Zuo Zhuan episode, in an early Chinese chronicle, set in 623 BCE uses 愾 for the enemy hated by the king. In 愾, 忄 is the shortened form of 心 (“heart”) and marks feeling, while 氣 supplies the sound; simplified 忾 writes that sound-bearing part as 气.

What does 忾 mean when someone sends it?

Alone, it has no settled chat reading.

Inside the common-enemy idiom, read it as shared hostility toward a common enemy. Sent alone, it is a rare literary character with both sighing and anger senses; ask which phrase or passage the sender has in mind.