Amazing Chinese Characters (487) Sugar - 糖

 The big seal script of character Sugar is

The left is character Rice (Post 163), the right is the character Tang (Post 485), which means to block a gap. Before I explain this character, I would like to introduce a related character Mud.

The big seal script of character Mud is

The left is character Water (Post 13), the right is character Tang. This character means Mud used to block the gap, the ancient Chinese used soil to block gap (see character Pond, Post 486), but sometimes, if the soil is too dry to be sticked there, therefore, adding some water to make mud would be much better to block the gap . 

Here ancient Chinese focused on the materials used for blocking the gap, not the result of blocking. Otherwise, the character Mud should mean Pond because it has Water.

In the character Sugar, the character Rice on the left means that the sugar was made from Rice including other grains because Radical Rice means all grains. Also, the character means the semi-fluid candy made from rice because people didn't know how to purify the sugar, only make Mud-alike candy. Because it is sweet, people called it Sugar but not the same pure white sugar today.

The small seal script of the character is

The left is character Rice, the right is character Tang.

The clerical script of the character is

The left is Rice, the right is Tang.

The song typeface of the character is

糖

Same as the clerical script.

The Pinyin of the character is Tang2.