Chinese character 毺

毺 is an old written variant of 毹, used in a carpet word.

It appears chiefly in 氍毺, a name for a wool or felt covering laid on a floor or bed. The more familiar spelling is 氍毹, with 毹 as its final character.

When was 氍毹 first recorded?

An early Chinese dictionary already records the word.

Shuowen Jiezi, an early Chinese dictionary compiled around 100–121 CE, explains 氍 using the carpet word 氍毹 and identifies 毹 as the word's final character. This records the compound, not the age of the alternate graph 毺.

Other early records group 氍毹 with 罽 and 毾㲪, textile names associated with regions west of China. A study compares this vocabulary with carpet terms from Sanskrit and Prakrit, older Indo-Aryan languages, and from Iranian and Central Asian sources; the precise word history remains unsettled.

Why can 氍毹 mean “the stage”?

The carpet's name extended to the performance space.

By the Ming period, Chinese theatre writing used 氍毹 for the carpeted performance area, especially the red carpet laid for opera. The word can therefore name the stage by extension; that sense belongs to the compound and context, not reliably to 毺 alone.