especially used in writing Daoist talismans. Historically, the word qì was generally written as until the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), when it was replaced by the graph clarified with mǐ "rice" indicating "steam (rising from rice as it cooks.)" This primary logograph , the earliest written character for qì, consisted of three wavy horizontal lines seen in Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BCE) oracle bone script, Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BCE) bronzeware script and large seal script, and Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE) small seal script. These oracle, bronze, and seal scripts logographs were used in ancient times as a phonetic loan character to write qǐ "plead for; beg; ask" which did not have an early character. The vast majority of Chinese characters are classified as radical-phonetic characters. Such characters combine a semantically suggestive "radical characters" with a phonetic element approximating ancient pronunciation. For example, the widely known word dào "the Dao; the way" graphically combines the "walk" radical with a shǒu "head" phonetic. Although the modern dào and shǒu pronunciations are dissimilar, the Old Chinese *lˤuʔ-s and *l̥uʔ-s were alike. The regular script character qì is unusual because qì is both the "air radical" and the phonetic, with mǐ "rice" semantically indicating "steam; vapor". This qì "air/gas radical" was only used in a few native Chinese characters like yīnyūn "thick mist/smoke", but was also used to create new scientific characters for gaseous chemical elements. Some examples are based on pronunciations in European languages: fú (with a fú phonetic) "fluorine" and nǎi (with a nǎi phonetic) "neon". Others are based on semantics: qīng (with a jīng phonetic, abbreviating qīng "light-weight") "hydrogen (the lightest element)" and lǜ (with a lù phonetic, abbreviating lǜ "green") "(greenish-yellow) chlorine". Qì is the phonetic element in a few characters such as kài "hate" with the "heart-mind radical" or , xì "set fire to weeds" with the "fire radical" , and xì "to present food" with the "food radical" . The first Chinese dictionary of characters, the Shuowen Jiezi(121 CE) notes that the primary qì is a pictographic character depicting "cloudy vapors", and that the full combines "rice" with the phonetic qi , meaning "present provisions to guests" (later disambiguated as xì ). Meanings Qi is a polysemous word. The unabridged Chinese-Chinese character dictionary Hanyu Da Cidian defines it as "present food or provisions" for the xì pronunciation but also lists 23 meanings for the qì pronunciation. The