Amazing Chinese characters (564) Bathe - 澡

  The big seal script of character Bathe is

The left is character Water, the right is character 喿.

Let's see the Liu Shu Tong script for the character Bathe (Liu Sho Tong is a collection of all old scripts not collected in formal collections)

The top is character Nest (Post 45), the bottom is character Water in horizontal. The above script may mean that the bathe of birds when it is raining. 

We can see that a bird goes into a water in the summer with its head, or swings temporarily, then shakes off the water from its body, repeat many times. The character means a bathe like that: spraying some water on body, and dry with tower; not the normal bathe in which the body is soak in water.

Back to the big seal script at the beginning, the right part is more like a nest with a mouth, meaning a bird is spraying water in its body to have a light bathe.

The small seal script of character Bathe is

The left is Water, the right is Noise, not Nest.

The clerical script of the character is

The left is Three Drop Radical, the right is character Noise.

Its Pinyin is Zao3.

There is another character Bathe - 浴 (Post 230), which is "soak in water" bathe from the beginning. The character 澡 here was not "soak in water" bathe 3000+ years ago, but it is same as normal bathe right now. The two are exchangeable.