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「Flowing fluids」with「obi」as a wide sash used to tie breasts and make them appear flat. Large breasts were a bit embarrassing in Asia it seems, until the modern age. Tying one's breasts flat with a long obi sash is not simple, perhaps accounting for the meaning SLUGGISH, DELAYED, SLOW-MOVING, HINDERED. Breasts noticeably enlarge prior to and while nursing an infant until weaning and if striving to appear small, then during this time might be the most common time of sash tying. The meaning of STAGNANT has more to do with inactivity than being rotten, let's hope. Might refer to the STAGNANT stench created by not thoroughly drying the sweat from one's kimono sash or obi (worn almost under the arms). Or the「liquid flowing」could have referred to leaked breast milk on a hot summer's day that might have started smelling a bit as the warm protein combined with aerobic bacteria. The mother may have been HINDERED from feeding her nursing infant for some reason, feeding was DELAYED and OVERDUE, and so on and so forth. REMAIN, STAY would perhaps be referring to the breasts now in an unflappable situation and not flopping about inside the kimono.
External source definitions …excluding politically incorrect concepts and other meanings deemed offensive today; may include extended definitions, euphemisms, and mnemonics)
Chinese: sluggish
Japanese EDRDG: block up, obstruct, stagnant
Unihan extended: block up, obstruct; stagnant
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
Chinese usage: 25 entries
Related glyphs [ Toggle font ]
Similar glyphs with related meanings: 23 entries
- Glyph.08080
- Strokes: 14
- grade_10
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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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