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SHO U
to ko ･ yu ka
Glyph elements [ Toggle Font ]
A rectangular inset or ALCOVE is called the TOKONOMA (「area of floor/bed」) in Japanese, but is now often used for other special displays, generally (and the very sick are sent to hospitals instead). The place for a heavy sickbed was an「area with a hard wood floor」and not tatami, as that would soon be destroyed by a heavy bed. Both the「cavern」element and the「bed」element were used in this glyph at various times, and it seems that the two have morphed and merged to become the「illness」element used to mean「sickbed in cavernous area.」
Interestingly, the old Japanese word for BARBER includes this glyph, since in earlier times a barber performed both surgical and dental functions with those sick in bed, and was needed later to prepare a corpse's hair and to shave the deceased person's face prior to a funeral.
CURIOUS, EAGER TO LEARN and NOSTALGIC FEELING are meanings likely related to elements as「palming control of erect woody」as an activity also performed often whilst IN BED.
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: bed; couch; classifier for beds
Japanese: counter for beds, bedding, sickbed, alcove, riverbed, seedbed, straw "core" of a tatami mat, floor, stage, dining platform built across a river, admirable, charming, refined, nostalgic, curious, eager to know
Unihan extended: bed, couch; framework, chassis
EDRDG: bed; counter for beds; floor; padding; tatami
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: 140 entries
Chinese usage: 89 entries
Used in glyphs (or, see also): 31 entries
Related glyphs [ Toggle font ]
- Glyph.01182
- Strokes: 07
- jlpt-N3 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.
