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Why on Earth anyone would attach a weight to an arrow with a cord anywhere other than the arrowhead? Attaching a stone or weight behind an arrow with a long but lightweight silk cord is a historical technique primarily used for entangling targets (such as birds or running game) or for line-carrying (such as fishing or bridging gaps). In various traditional hunting practices, archers targeted fast-moving flocking birds or small running animals where a direct hit with a narrow arrow might miss or fail to stop the animal instantly. When the arrow hits or passes close to the target, the trailing cord and attached stone wrap around the animal's legs, wings, or neck, functioning similarly to a thrown bola, using the momentum of the projectile to hobble or bring down the creature by fouling its movement. If the cord is attached securely to both the archer (or a spool) and the arrow, adding a weight or drag behind the projectile serves the specific mechanical purpose of line deployment. Shooting a bare, lightweight string from a bow can cause erratic flight because the string catches the wind or creates drag unevenly. A weighted setup helps pull the line smoothly. In specialized fishing or tactical scenarios, a cord allows the archer to retrieve the arrow and anything it struck. Historically, line-carrying arrows were used to pass ropes across barriers such as rivers, chasms, or walls. A trailing weight helps stabilize the trajectory of the cord package as it arcs through the air, ensuring the line carries far enough over the target obstacle without tangling. Note however that this glyph contains no elements of either a bow or an arrow, so originally it may have referred to something completely different.
Perhaps from the「fluids flowing on prepuce, down to the stones」as the whole schmear as it were. Frankly, all these possible elements combined once again seem to indicate a long tapered shaft with a sharp tip deliberately inserted into flesh for the purpose of restoring a flow of fluids, a tool known as a bougie, or perhaps in this case to dislodge a「stone at the dirk tip」of a patient passing a kidney stone.
External source definitions …excluding politically incorrect concepts and other meanings deemed offensive today; may include extended definitions, euphemisms, and mnemonics)
Japanese EDRDG: arrowhead, stone tied to an arrow shaft
Unihan extended: arrow-tip
Always keep in mind that these glyphs most likely were originally designed by groups of clever old men as vulgar riddles for their own entertainment
(see 籒 for that),
representing Chinese society many thousands of years ago, but intended NOT as a written or spoken language when created.
If these glyphs had been intended for language use, the sages could not have possibly designed a worse system!
Is it truly possible that all these glyphs started out as off-color jokes and puzzles?
Yes! It is, and often with multiple correct answers to each riddle, the same as is true today.
Sex had no shame in ancient China.
Why would it?
But, have there been necessary rewrites and altered explanations of the original elemental meanings over the centuries?
No one is suggesting these glyphs depict contemporary life in China, Japan, or anywhere else.
This site describes glyph meanings, not people.
These glyphs however, describe many and various things, including people, long before there were any notions of becoming politically incorrect.
The question to be answered is, should these glyphs continue being used, by anyone, anywhere, for expressing language?
(More...)
Despite how seemingly bad our human existence is today, do you actually believe that the so-called good old days were any better?
Or could they have been worse?
By the way, with a limited number of the same elements used by the sages again and again to form these glyphs,
you should expect to find the same explanations again and again, as tedious as that may become, and as an inherent trait of any lexicon.
This site explains multiple meanings of glyphs ignored or censored by other sources, generally as being too embarrassing to admit today.
Primal elements
Related glyphs [ Toggle font ]
Similar glyphs with related meanings: 17 entries
- Glyph.07381
- Strokes: 13
- other
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This publication has included material from the MDBG free online English to Chinese dictionary files in accordance with the license provisions of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
This publication has included material from the JMdict (EDICT, etc.) dictionary files in accordance with the license provisions of the Electronic Dictionaries Research Group.
This publication has included material from the Unicode Character Database. Copyright © 1991-2016 Unicode, Inc. All rights reserved. Distributed under these Terms of Use.