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Qi
    Keywords: Culture & History, Equipment

棋 (Qi2) is a short term for wei-qi and a character in the [ext] Chinese alphabet which exists in two versions: One means wood, the other stone. Both relate to the material used for Go equipment in ancient China.

Niklaus: The word qi never means "wood" or "stone", but always "board game". It is not only used for weiqi, but also xiangqi (chinese chess) and other board games of skill. Nowadays there is only one way to write it: 棋. However, at some point in history another variant was used, which was imported by the japanese to form the word go: 碁. The two characters both have the same phonetic component (其), but different radicals ("meaning component"). The standard one uses the radical for wood, while the ancient / japanese one uses the radical for stone. But the meaning of the whole character is still the same. The japanese by the way also use the character 棋 (pronounced ki or gi) for board games other than go, for example in the word shogi.


Note: 气 (Qi4) means liberty.



This is a copy of the living page "Qi" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.