Posted 2017/6/20
In the oracle bone inscriptions, "wei"(尾) is like a hairy ornament hanging down from a person's buttocks. An image like this can only be found in animals. So the original meaning of the character "wei" was an animal's tail. The form of the character in the oracle bone inscriptions is little changed in the small seal script. In the regular script, though, the character is made up of a "shi"(尸) radical and a "mao"(毛), with the former meaning a body and the latter hair. In this structure, it is quite clear that the character refers to the hair at the back of the body, i.e. the tail. Based on this meaning, the character had some extended meanings like "end", "last part", "edge", "back" and "final point" etc. In phrases like "weizi" (meaning "odd amount in addition to the round number") and "weikuan" (meaning "the remaining payment"), the character "wei" means "the last par". There's a Chinese idiom called "hutou shewei". It literally means a tiger's head and a snake's tail. The idiom is used to describe a fine start and a poor finish.
