480531170

age; this complex form was ousted at the seal
stage by . Other senses in Japanese such as
‘eat, drink; wear’ seem to be loan uses, taking
sound value of mesu ‘call, summon’ equivalent
to its meaning in Chinese when first borrowed
and applying it to a homophonous verb
meaning ‘eat, drink; wear’. MS1995:v1:208-9;
KJ1970:607-8; OT1968:163; AS2007:608;
JD1970:734.
Mnemonic: CUT MOUTH WHILE PARTAKING
SO SUMMON HELP
1487
匠
SHŌ
Seal ; late graph (Shuowen). Has ‘box’
craftsman, idea
(pictograph), and 1233 ‘ax’, thus ‘ax in box’
L1
6 strokes
> ‘carpentry/carpenter’. Some scholars (Tōdō,
Ogawa) take as short for 1209, a square
SHISHŌmaster
used by carpenter (probable original meaning
KYOSHŌgreat master
of ‘huge’), but overall meaning is unchanged.
ISHŌidea, design
KJ1970:540; GY2008:249; TA1965:376;
OT1968:134.
Mnemonic: CRAFTSMAN KEEPS AX IN
BOX – GOOD IDEA
1488
床
SHŌ, toko, yuka
bed, floor, alcove
L2
7 strokes
BYŌSHŌsickbed
yukabariflooring
tokonomaalcove
Late post-Shuowen graph. Popular variant of
‘bed, couch’. is originally an OBI pictograph
profile view of a stand or couch seemingly
stood upright (orientation of OBI graphs
often differed from later), here combining
with 73 ‘wood’. appears in Yupian dictionary,
and later in Kangxi zidian, still not
given official status but again noted as popular
form. ‘Floor’ and ‘alcove’ are Japanese-only
senses. Ogawa takes as ‘that which is used
inside a house 127 and made of wood ,
hence ‘floor’. Gu suggests that as variant of ,
may have evolved mistakenly. MS1995:v2:
824-5; GY2008:480-81; ZY2009:v2:304;
OT1968:327.
Mnemonic: BUILDING HAS WOODEN FLOOR
AND BED IN ALCOVE
1489
抄
SHŌ
extract, excerpt
L1
7 strokes
SHŌHONextract
SHISHŌselected poems
SHŌYAKUabridged translation
Late post-Shuowen graph. Shuowen itself has
(CO; ‘paper money; collected writings’),
but not , though analysis of is helpful to
our understanding of its later variant .
has 16 ‘metal’, with 160 (‘few, little’) as
phonetic; views on the associated sense vary.
Katō sees it as ‘hold/put between’, specifically
‘stab (object) with metal implement and take’;
and ‘take by force’ is the meaning for given
in the Yupian dictionary. Another associated
sense of here is ‘join together small
items such as shells (currency) or precious
stones’, giving ‘draw in things linked together’
(Shirakawa). Ogawa, by contrast, takes the
associated sense as ‘scoop up’, thus ‘scoop
up’, and by extension ‘take by force’. With all
the above analyses, ‘take’ may be regarded
as core meaning of , giving ‘extract’ as extended
sense. Later, ‘hand 34’ replaced .
KJ1970:604; SS1984:436; OT1968:403.
Mnemonic: EXTRACT A LITTLE BY HAND
The Remaining 1130 Characters 441