服

• Attire and Status: Clothing associated with a specific role, rank, or occasion, including official uniforms, ceremonial robes, and mourning dress. Includes the regalia or system of dress required by one's position.
• Submission and Service: The acceptance of authority. This includes obeying, yielding, or submitting to a superior; subduing or conquering a person or territory; serving in an official capacity; and undergoing a prescribed term of service or sentence.
• Medical Ingestion: The act of taking or ingesting medicine.

• Noun: A garment, or a specific set of attire/regalia.
• Transitive Verb: To wear (clothing); to take (medicine); to subdue (an opponent or territory).
• Intransitive Verb: To obey; to submit.

Distinguished from 衣 (//yī//), which refers more broadly to fabric or general garments, whereas 服 typically denotes attire associated with specific roles or status.

The semantic movement between "wearing a uniform" and "submitting to authority" is fluid. In political or ritual texts, the glyph may signal a transition between the outward sign of rank (the dress) and the inward recognition of hierarchy (obedience).