A net strung between two posts, its cords crossing again and again — exactly what a Shang fisherman or bird-catcher hung out to bring dinner home. The oracle-bone scribes carved the woven strands in full; the modern 网 kept the frame and simplified the weave down to a single crossing X. The same net now catches something the Shang could never have imagined: 网 is the character hiding inside 互联网, the internet.
A piece of culture
From fishing net to internet For most of its three-thousand-year life, 网 meant exactly one thing: a net for fish, birds or rabbits, the tool that turned the wild into dinner. When Chinese needed a word for the World Wide Web, it reached for that same ancient image: 互联网 (hùliánwǎng), "mutually-connected net", and simply "going online" is 上网 (shàngwǎng) — literally "going up onto the net", the very 上 you already climbed a mountain with.
Use it in a real word
鱼网
yúwǎng · jyu4 mong5
fishing net — literally "fish net"; you already know 鱼