緒 (SHO, CHO, o: beginning, cord, clue, connection)
If you don’t know 緒, seeing it can easily feel frustrating (堪忍袋の緒が切れる!). There’s a nagging sense that this character looks familiar … but why??? It’s similar to 者 (SHA, mono: person), but that’s missing the “thread” radical 糸 (ito-hen) you find in 緒.
In 緒, the 者 acts phonetically to express “end” or “beginning.” Henshall says that “end” and “beginning” mean the same thing in the case of a thread. I guess he means that either tip could qualify as the end or the beginning. For a moment I thought he was envisioning a thread as a never-ending circle.
Anyway, 緒 once meant the “start” or “end” of a thread, and then 緒 came to mean both “thread, cord” and “beginning.” Also, 緒 became associated with “starting to unravel a tangle,” which yielded the meanings “clue” and “connection.”
By the way, 緒 is the latter half of 一緒に (issho ni: together, one + lineage). This kanji was familiar after all! Ugh! No wonder kanji makes me lose my patience—not with the fabulous characters but with my limited memory!
And although I’d forgotten (!), we’ve talked about 緒 once before.
