送 wraps two pieces around each other: 辶 (chuò), the walking radical that puts feet and a road under everything it touches, and the enclosed element 关, which here supplies the body of a figure with raised arms. The character is meaning-built rather than sound-built; the two parts together stage a scene rather than spelling out a pronunciation. Read the glyph as that scene. Someone stands with hands lifted, gesturing at a traveler whose feet 辶 have already turned toward the road. The whole character is the moment of a person waving 关 at another who is walking away.

The Shuōwén Jiězì glosses 送 as 遣 (qiǎn), to dispatch or send forth, and classifies it under 辵 (the full form of 辶). Movement is the load-bearing idea. Whatever 送 acts on departs from where the speaker stands: a guest steps out the gate, a parcel leaves the warehouse, a gift crosses from your hands to another's. The walking radical drives the whole meaning.

From that root, the senses fan out by following the direction of travel. The most concrete is physical accompaniment, walking a guest to the door or the station, 送 someone off. Loosen the body of the actor and you get conveyance, 送 a letter or a meal across town. Loosen it further toward intention and you reach the warm idiom of giving, where 送 someone a present means handing across a thing that will not come back. Every layer keeps the original vector: something leaves you and arrives elsewhere.

Japanese inherits the character in 送る (okuru), to send or to see off, and 送料 (sōryō) for postage. Korean reads it 송 in 운송 (unsong), transport. Across all three writing traditions the falling fourth tone in Mandarin matches the gesture in the glyph: the hand comes down, the traveler is already gone.

This is the sense closest to the glyph's picture: you physically accompany someone toward their departure. 送 here pairs with a destination or a verb of leaving, and it carries genuine warmth. To 送 a guest to the door, 送 a friend to the airport, or 送 a child to school is to walk part of the road with them so they do not set out alone.

Stand at a train platform as the doors hiss shut. A friend on the platform lifts both arms 关 and waves; the carriage 辶 is already rolling, feet of the road carrying the traveler off. Freeze that one frame and you have 送: the raised hands above, the walking radical sliding away beneath. The character is the choreography of departure itself.

Let the platform dissolve and the same gesture replays at every scale. Hands lift to push a wrapped gift across a table, 送礼; hands lift to wave a colleague out the door of the farewell party, 欢送; hands hoist a parcel onto the courier's bike, 送货. In each case something leaves your grasp and travels to someone else. The waving arms are constant; only the distance changes.

The falling fourth tone seals the image. Say sòng and the pitch drops the way a waving hand drops when the train is finally gone. Whatever 送 touches, you let it go and it arrives somewhere else.