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HI N ・ BI N
ma zu shi i
Glyph elements [ Toggle Font ]
Conceptually,「dividing one's wealth」implicitly leads to a MEAGER amount remaining. In dynastic China,「dividing the fleshpot」suggests sharing with a buddy the use of a slave or short-term rental, since the co-owners or clients were too POOR to afford one for each of them (caution: not a hygienic method, generally speaking).
「Divided wealth」when contrasted with shared wealth must eventually cause POVERTY somewhere with someone, seen today as the fabled 1% purportedly holds 50% or more of the Earth's wealth. The human nature to 'share it fairly but don't take a slice of my pie' guarantees that 'ye have the poor always with you,' to quote Pink Floyd and Jesus of Nazareth, respectively.
Top element as「evenly divided」perhaps conveys the notion that food from the「fleshpot, cauldron」must be carefully measured and divided evenly and fairly among the tribe participants of the meal due to a MEAGER AMOUNT of food, which is the first sign of POVERTY. If there were plenty and not POVERTY, all could eat as much as they desired.
「Rightly dividing good and evil, an understanding of fleshpots, wealth」「distinguishing between one's goals of emissions」when coupled with the idea that the love of money, and sex, are the roots of all sorts of evil suggests an ascetic lifestyle is preferable—yet, folks still hope to win the Powerball jackpot for some reason and then 'get laid tonight!.' Underfed rats live a longer (impoverished) life, but the well-fed fat ones are clearly happier, albeit for less time…which is better? most humans and rats prefer more fleshpots (富) and money now rather than less later, and this glyph's antonym (賀) of 'joy, congratulations' consists of 'added wealth, adding fleshpots, the power of fleshpot orifices, efforts gasping with erection and orifices with the goal of emissions,' so you must choose your own path there with no help from the sages, it seems. Perhaps the middle of the road, avoiding ruts on both sides…?
External source definitions …excluding politically incorrect concepts and other meanings deemed offensive today; may include extended definitions, euphemisms, and mnemonics)
Chinese: poor; inadequate; deficient; garrulous
Japanese EDRDG: poverty, poor
Unihan extended: poor, impoverished, needy
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: 84 entries
Chinese usage: 56 entries
Used in glyphs (or, see also): 1 entry
Related glyphs [ Toggle font ]
Similar glyphs with related meanings: 7 entries
- Glyph.04663
- Strokes: 11
- jlpt-N3 grade_05
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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.
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