服 by itself means "clothing" (e.g. 服を着る), and there are also some related derivative terms like 私服, 制服, 和服, 洋服, etc. On the other hand, you have words like 征服 "conquest", 克服 "overcoming", 承服 "compliance", 服従 "obedience", which I have broadly classed as being related to the idea of "submission".
How did 服 come to have these two seemingly-unrelated meanings? Is this a purely Japanese innovation, or is it like this in Chinese too?
The Online Kanji Etymology Dictionary has some rather terse notes on how these two meanings came to be. A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters (Henshall) describes its history as:
Once written
showing a boat 舟, a person 卩, and a hand 又. [...] The early meaning is known to have been work, and some scholars feel that it meant literally bend down in order to work on [a boat]. Yield/serve is felt to derive from a combined idea of bending down and performing work. How exactly it came to mean clothes, however, is not clear. It is assumed to be a borrowed meaning, though it is also possible that 服 once came by extension to indicate a servant's livery.
Going back to the Online Kanji Etymology Dictionary, you can see that the original form () had 舟 (boat) replaced with 肉 (⺼; flesh) in seal script (
), which may be where "clothes" comes from---"clothes that spread over/cling to the body".
It's a question about Chinese rather than Japanese. The word 服從 once appeared in Book of Rites (道合則服從，不可則去。Obey if you share the same idea, or else leave), and the meaning of clothes once appeared in ZhanGuoCe (朝服衣冠 put up clothes in the morning). Both of them were from Chinese thousands of years ago.
According to this link, 服 meant to put shackles on prisoners when it was invented. Then its derivative meanings forked here: to put something on, or to force someone obey or accept. From the latter, there once again derived a new meaning 服用 to take (medicine).
The semantic extension of「服」is in the following sequence:
These meanings were found in Chinese before importation into Japanese. Compare similar English words using terms of clothing to describe the status of a person (blue-collar, white-collar).
「服」(submission) can be seen as representing a similar or identical word to「伏」(prostrate, bend down); they are both Baxter-Sagart OC: /*[b]ək/ > Kan-on: ふく.
「服」was originally「𠬝」(that is, without the left hand side component).
「𠬝」was originally a picture of a hand「又」subduing a kneeling person「卩」.
商
甲
甲3834
合集753西周
金
㝬鐘
集成260
篆
說文解字
今
楷
Semantic「凡」was added later, bringing out the meaning of to serve.
The third form above contains「舟」, and the fourth form contains「⺼・肉」; these changes should be considered as graphical corruptions of「凡」.
「凡」originally depicted a large tray used for carrying things or people, now written as「盤」or「槃」, which also contains the corrupted「凡」in the form of「舟」on the top left. The meaning general, common of「凡」is a phonetic loan.
商
甲
燕147
合集18875秦
簡
睡・效30
今
楷
References:
As this is a Chinese character, I think it would be easier to describe it in Chinese Historical War terms.
The traditions of clothing, is actually determined by a dynasty. Notice one of the major changes during any Chinese civil war or revolution is the changes of clothing. Good Example: Tang Dynasty clothing or Qing Dynasty clothing. In fact, if peasants refuses to change the way how they dress (even the way how hair looks), the peasants then will be considered as being against the government.
Ideogrammic compound: 卩 (“kneeling person”) + 又 (“spread hands”) + ⺼ (“person's back”) = a kneeling person attending another person's back.
Another very interesting way to look at clothing: there was an idioms named "被发左衽" (as the way how Mongolians dress). The saying of "Chinese might ended up 被发左衽" literally means that Chinese might ended up losing their country to Mongolians.
