Chinese character 胠

It means armpit, right wing, or side-opening.

Its body sense is the hollow beneath the arm. In military writing, 胠 can mean the right wing of a formation; in 胠箧, it means opening a box from the side. The surrounding phrase tells you which sense fits.

How old is 胠?

胠 is attested in Qin-era writing on a seal and bamboo slips.

In its structure, 肉 marks the body and appears as 月 in this character; 去 supplies the sound. A traditional dictionary explanation connects the military and opening senses to the body’s side. A difficult line in Xunzi, an early Chinese philosophical text, uses 胠 for a fish stranded on sand; dictionaries link this reading to 阹, meaning to block or pen in, but the interpretation is disputed. The same graph also has different readings in Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese.

Should you send 胠 alone?

Usually not without a shared source.

On its own, this literary character leaves the reader guessing between an armpit, a formation’s right wing, and opening something from the side. Use it alone only when you and the reader already share the passage.