I’m wondering about the etymology for the character 氣 (qì), specifically the assertion that “The full form 氣 has 米 (mǐ) ‘rice’ added: 气 steam rising from 米 rice as it cooks.” I suspect that’s just another fairy tale and that 米 was added as a phonetic element. But I lack the references to check such things.
Your suspicion is a healthy one (you should rarely trust explanations where the elements of a graph interact to tell a story). However, I think you have it backwards re: which is phonetic. I’ll check the details for you shortly, but I seem to remember that this was originally a food-related graph with qi4 phonetic and mi3 semantic, and that it was borrowed phonetically later. Give me a few hours and I’ll check the details.
The steaming rice thing appears to be pretty close according to these 2 links:
internationalscientific.org/ … =%E6%B0%A3
internationalscientific.org/ … =%E6%B0%94
I would begin with an analysis of 气, actually. I’ve found a graph resembling 三 and thought to be 气 in the oracle bones; the structure is “unclear” according to one author,
趙誠
Zhào Chéng, and it is used as a phonetic loan in the role of an adverb meaning 終 zhong1, in the 6-graph fragment
之日气ㄓ來[女+壴]. ㄓ
means
有; [女+壴]
is pronounced like
難
nan and means
凶咎
xiong1 jiu4; the phrase
气ㄓ來[女+壴]
means
終於有來難.
Shuowen identifies the seal graph as “cloudy vapors” (
雲气也
), although it could have been layers of air or clouds for all we know. Since this plausibly matches the OB through seal structures of 气, which was later borrowed phonetically to mean ‘beg’ (we now use the clerical simplification of this, 乞, for this latter meaning), this does appear to be the origin of the graph for ‘air’ etc.
Next,
氣
: As I had posted earlier, this is originally a food-related graph, and was borrowed phonetically for the meaning of ‘air’, etc., while 气 (乞) was borrowed for ‘beg’. As the site sjcma linked to says, Shuowen gives
饋客芻米也從米气聲
, all the food and so on prepared for guests. The rice component is therefore semantic, and the 气 is purely phonetic, rather than the other way around. Oh, while 氣 was borrowed for ‘air’ etc., the original meaning was preserved in
餼
(now xì) ‘food prepared for guests’.
As for the above etymology site, by Richard Sears, it’s neat to have a searchable etymology site but unfortunately their content so far isn’t very good. It looks like it’s based primarily on Shuowen, although he also cites Karlgren, which just doesn’t cut it. I also detect a trace of Wieger with the ‘primitives’ bit. You can’t do proper etymology based on modern kaishu structures or even seal script while ignoring oracle bone to bronze forms. These sources are all badly out of date.
For example, they have:
[quote]Signific: 气 remnant
Etymology: Remnant Primitive, A man blowing air from his mouth[/quote]
But there’s no “man” present in the graph, nor is there a mouth. A man blowing air would theoretically resemble the 
oracle bone form of 欠, perhaps plus one or more strokes or swirls for the air. If you look at the kaishu form, it is quite possible, based on sloppy folk etymology, to try to interpret the top 丿+ 一 together as something like 人, but it’s pretty ignorant to do so, given that the oracle bone and bronze forms resemble 三. Clearly, the three strokes have just morphed meaninglessly over time.
And for 氣 he has
I’m guessing his “Signific Cluster” is an idiosyncratic translation of 會意 hui4yi4, usually given as ‘associative compound’, ‘compound indicative’ or ‘logical aggregate’. One of the most common errors in folk etymology is to try to see every compound graph as a hui4yi4, when in fact they are a tiny, tiny minority – less than 3%, I think – of all graphs. Given the food-related meaning and the 气 pronunciation, it’s quite obvious that this graph fits in the semantic-phonetic category, as do almost all graphs.
I hate to be too critical of what Sears has put together after only looking at the etymologies of two graphs, but the intro to the site also has a lot of egregious blunders, e.g.,
(Lishu predates this, and probably didn’t mean ‘crude’. It was written with brushes, not reeds.)
and
Brushes are thought to have existed as early as the Neolithic, and to have been used for writing at least as early as the middle Shang, and probably much earlier.
DB, do you know anything about
炁
?
[quote=“rice_t”]DB, do you know anything about
炁
?[/quote]
Not off the top of my head, (EDIT – other than that it’s probably in the ji/qi/xi pronunciation range, given that the top is ji4, ‘to burp’; same as the OB I gave above for 欠 but with the head turned backwards, apparently to indicate reversal or obstruction). Hang on…
CAUTION: Chinese-character geeks at work. 
I’m loving it! I am learning a lot from you guys. 
Ok, 漢語大字典 Hanyu Da Zidian says it’s read qi4, and according to 玉篇 Yùpiān (Yu-p’ian, a Six Dynasties i.e., 3rd – 6th cent. CE, dictionary, only part of which survives): " 炁, 古氣字" it was an old graph meaning 氣. It cites the 集韻 Ji-yun, a N. Song rhyming dictionary, which backs this up, listing 氣 + 炁 as variant forms under 气.
This is presumably (and as usual) a semanto-phonetic compound of some kind, although it’s hard to say whether it was created for this meaning or not. I’d guess not. Just from lengthy experience with such graphs, I’ll take a wild guess and say it’s a phonetic loan, and that it originally had a fire-related meaning with a ji/qi/xi-range pronunciation. Of course, one can never rule out the possibility that the four dots aren’t even fire. See for example 魚 yu2, fish, where they are abbreviations of the fins and tail.
Thank, DB. You da man! 