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I
ha ri ne zu mi
Glyph elements [ Toggle Font ]
The Japanese pronunciation for this glyph is「needle rat (quill rodent)」and generally refers to a porcupine or hedgehog. Elements of「pig-snouted」as the「hog」in hedgehog, the「porc」in porcupine, and「surround on all sides」refer to the animal's instinctive defense mechanism of rolling its body into a ball「to the limit」when confronted by a predator or enemy, and binding all sides into a protective mass of protruding quills, literally COLLECTING itself into a ball, CLUSTERING. Porcupines and hedgehogs are rather slow to move, so instead「remain surrounded and in need of protection」with a COLLECTION of similar items as its 30,000 or so quills perhaps, the only things visible「on all sides」when in a defensive posture. The quills are effective for「plugging with a shaft」into the flesh of an attacker, but the actual reproductive strategy used by these animals may be another meaning altogether (see related glyphs for details).
Modern definitions (that generally disregard history) …excluding politically incorrect concepts and other meanings deemed offensive today; may list only pigeonholed definitions, euphemisms, or meaningless mnemonics)
Chinese: class; collection
Japanese: kind, sort, type
Unihan extended: collect, compile, assemble; hedgehog
EDRDG: same kind
Always keep in mind that these glyphs were originally created by groups of clever old men as vulgar riddles and analogies for their own entertainment
(see 籒 for that)
and represented Chinese society many thousands of years ago, and not as a written or spoken language.
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!
Sex had no shame in ancient China. Why would it? And now, there is a cover-up.
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 bad the human world is today, do you actually believe that the so-called good old days were any better? Or they could only 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 dictionary.
This site explains the dual meanings of glyphs most often ignored by other sources that provide you with only the sanctioned definition, generally.
Primal elements
Japanese vocabulary: 15 entries
Chinese usage: 19 entries
Related glyphs [ Toggle font ]
Similar glyphs with related meanings: 55 entries
- Glyph.06949
- Strokes: 13
- grade_08
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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.