A short entry on 晒
Formerly 曬, which consists of 日 sun and 麗 beautiful. The newer and simpler 晒 (using West 西 ) may have been an attempt to restore the phonetic or just an convenient abbreviation. Its original meaning seems to have been to dry in the sun or to expose to the sun, with later on the figurative meaning of to expose as an extended meaning.
Mnemonic: exposure to the Western sun has a bleaching effect
Verbose explanation and references
晒 is a modern variant for 曬. Xǔ Shèn writes that 麗 is its phonetic. However, it doesn’t seem to have been a predictable phonetic at the time, which might have been the reason for substituting the phonetic for 西 (which seems an only slightly better phonetic to be honest).
I’d think the meaning of 麗 could make more sense than it pronunciation: make something beautiful using the sun → to bleach.¹
When I first looked up 晒す in a Japanese dictionary (sarasu, ‘to expose; to bleach’) I mistook 西 for 酉 thinking that a verb with the meaning to bleach would be related to 酒 alcohol-like substances to treat stuff to bleach them. 酒 could be a twisted mnemonic in that way, but it’s wrong unfortunately, 西 is simply ‘the West’ - and I don’t expect a Western sun to have any more bleaching or exposing effect than an Eastern sun. Surely it’s just a convenient abbreviation or phonetic.
Still, as a mnemonic one could come up with could be something like: exposure to the Western sun has a bleaching effect.
Notes
References
- Henshall A guide to remembering Japanese characters, Kenneth G. Henshall. Tōkyō. Charles E. Tuttle Company. Rutland, Vermont & Tokyo 1990 [1988].
- Xǔ Shèn 說文解字, 許慎 Xǔ Shèn . [CE 121].
CC BY-SA 4.0