The story of 刮

scrape, shave

刮 is composed of 刀(knife) and 舌(tongue). 舌 in there is actually the simplified combination of 氏(surname) and 口(mouth), 氏 depicts a bowing man, which has the meaning of lowering, our mouth will be bigger if we lower it(chin). If we want to scrap something by our teeth, we need to open our mouth widely, unlike biting, no need to close your mouth, knife is a scraping tool. Annotation: The combination of 氏(surname) and 口(mouth) is an old HanZi, now it is no longer used, Shuowen Jiezi(說文解字) said this word means ‘stuffed mouth’, which is wrong.