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SHI
i ta ru
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Top elements also refer to「grasping an instrument of torture with both hands and using it to the fullest extent」a somewhat SERIOUS condition, at least for the victim, and generally can mean「tenacious, tight grasp.」With「hands」added below, may refer to the traditional Chinese practice of pressing ones hands tightly together as one bows, to show respect, SINCERITY, CORDIALITY. The Chinese seem to have evolved various manners of grasping one's own fist in front of a person's chest as if grasping that torture tool, ready to thrust downward: after bowing to an equal, while kneeling on one knee to a superior, as a military salute, and so on and so forth. It would seem that this posture is what is being referred to by this glyph.
Note that a handshake from the West is also「grasps tightly a hand」as a CORDIAL or SINCERE greeting today, albeit someone else's hand. Apparently at the start, the purpose of shaking someone's arm by grasping the hand was to ascertain if there was a weapon hidden up the other person's sleeve,…so it was cordial, but not so trusting. A TWO-HANDED HANDSHAKE, that is also depicted by「happiness fully, with hands.」
External source definitions …excluding politically incorrect concepts and other meanings deemed offensive today; may include extended definitions, euphemisms, and mnemonics)
Chinese: sincere
Japanese EDRDG: gift, seriousness
Unihan extended: sincere, warm, cordial
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: 2 entries
Chinese usage: 11 entries
Similar glyphs with related meanings: 47 entries
- Glyph.09236
- Strokes: 15
- jlpt-N1 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.
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