Origin

This character combines wood (木) on the left with a component suggesting movement or progression (行) on the right. The wood radical identifies this as something made of wood, while the right side hints at something that extends or runs across in a line—like how a beam or girder spans from one point to another. Together they picture a wooden structural piece that holds things in a regular, orderly way. This sense of regular progression also made the character useful for counting units in columns, as in accounting where items are arranged row by row.