480531170

555
L3
戦
SEN, tatakau, ikusa
fight, war
13 strokes
TAISENmajor war
SENJŌbattleground
SAKUSENstrategy
Bronze ; seal ; traditional . OBI form has
two halberds (halberds > ‘fight, injure’, see
545), bronze onwards one , with/ 569
(usually seen as forked weapon, but possibly
shield with trappings; now means ‘simple’);
here is widely taken as phonetic with associated
sense ‘fight’, thus ‘fight with halberds’,
then generalized sense ‘fight; war’, but given
its original meaning (in either sense), it may
have had a semantic role too. MS1995:v1:542-3;
KJ1970:625; YK1970:319; OT1968:396,190;
SS1984:522; MR2007:237.
Mnemonic: FIGHT IN WAR WITH SIMPLE
HALBERD
556
L3
選
SEN, erabu, yoru
choose
15 strokes
TŌSENelection
SENSHUplayer
erabidasupick out, select
Seal ; late graph (Shuowen); traditional form
; Interpretations vary. Has / 85 ‘go, walk’,
and (CO, ‘arrange items on table in order’)
as phonetic with associated sense taken by
Katō and Yamada as ‘continue afterwards’ >
557
L3
然
ZEN, NEN, shikaru,
shikashi
duly, thus, but, so,
proper
12 strokes
TŌZENrightly
TENNENnature
shikarubekiproper, due
Bronze ; seal ; late graph (Shuowen).
Interpretation disputed. Analysis based on
early forms gives () 8 ‘flames, fire’, with
as phonetic with associated sense taken by
Yamada and Ogawa as ‘flames, burn’, resulting
in the overall meaning ‘burn/burn fiercely’.
Katō cautions against taking the top left-hand
element in as ‘meat’ (the meaning it has in
423, for example), pointing to OBI and bronze
forms for which depict a plow (or plows), not
a piece of meat; those forms are complicated
in shape, the most complicated having the
‘continue walking’. Ogawa, alternatively, treats
as both semantic and phonetic, meaning
‘arrange properly’, to give original meaning
‘select, arrange, and send’ for . With Ogawa’s
treatment, ‘choose’ is a selectively extended
sense, while Katō and Yamada take it as a loan
usage. KJ1970:625; YK1976:320; OT1968:1014.
We suggest taking as 866 ‘self’ in its original
meaning of ‘twisting threads’ (x 2), with 484
‘together’, plus movement.
Mnemonic: CHOOSE TO MOVE TOGETHER
LIKE TWO TWISTED THREADS
elements for ‘field’ with several plows and dogs,
the ‘dog’ element being taken as phonetic with
associated sense ‘field/drainage ditch’ (CO ).
Because at the bronze stage the elements for
‘plow’ and ‘dog’ were of similar shape, bronze
stage ‘plow’ was misinterpreted and carried
over into seal script as ‘dog’. In due course, the
graph was borrowed for its sound value to
represent other linguistic forms having abstract
meanings such as ‘in such a manner, thus’.
Usage in abstract senses came to predominate,
and so to distinguish when used in its
original meaning ‘burn’, was added to create
the new graph (786, ‘burn’). YK1976:322;
KJ1970:633,103; MS1995:802-3,1070-72;
OT1968:621; QX2000:329. Though etymologically
incorrect, we suggest taking as ‘dog
meat’ ( 19 ‘dog’ and ‘meat’ 209), and 8
‘burn, flames’.
Mnemonic: DULY EAT BURNT DOG MEAT, AS
IS PROPER, BUT
186 The 200 Fourth Grade Characters