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KE TSU ・ KE N
ka ke ru ・ ka ku
Glyph elements [ Toggle Font ]
「Head rolled person」may be YAWNING, a GAPING, wide-open mouth (for various reasons), or decapitated torso BLOWING HARD (for various reasons, and various fluids). A person will often roll back their head, facing straight up while YAWNING, also common among penguins, dogs, primates and most animals (all the vertebrates) that yawn. With one's severed nether head「head rolling」around on the ground (see other glyphs that use this as an element for further details) folks might stare with mouths wide open, and gasp. Some empirical data supports that contagious yawning is a measure of empathy. Perhaps related to open-mouthed BLOWING HARD (for various reasons) or seeing someone walking around headless, whether deserved or undeserved. While the external dictionaries emphasis 欠 as 'the yawning radical,' it cannot be said that oscitation is anywhere close to the main meaning…rather, look for a deficiency, missing parts, something broken, fragmented, splintered, and shortened. Researchers tell us that yawning serves to cool the brain in order to maintain optimal working temperature for continued thinking and alertness.
External source definitions …excluding politically incorrect concepts and other meanings deemed offensive today; may include extended definitions, euphemisms, and mnemonics)
Chinese: deficient; to owe; to lack; yawn
Japanese EDRDG: lack, gap, fail
Unihan extended: owe, lack, be deficient
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
Japanese vocabulary: 147 entries
Chinese usage: 33 entries
Used in glyphs (or, see also): 108 entries
Related glyphs [ Toggle font ]
Similar glyphs with related meanings: 14 entries
- Glyph.00146
- Strokes: 04
- jlpt-N3 grade_04
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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.