焚 （burn, fén） is an associative compound. In terms of the grapheme, the upper component of the oracle bone inscriptions is “林 (forest)” and the lower one is “火 (fire)”. When hunting in the ancient time, people will burn the forest to force the wild animals out. So the original meaning of this word is burning the mountain. In the present Chinese character, 焚 （burn, fén） still retains the grapheme similar to that in the oracle bone inscription, but the meaning has been changed from “burning the mountain” to the abstract “burn” and in addition, it also has the meaning of destruction. For example, the basic meaning of the phrase “玩火自焚” is“somebody who plays with fire will get burnt” which means that any one do evil to others would finally harm himself.
