Random new word of the day

[jbradfor]

Your assumption would be correct. What does it look like to you?

亻 + 匕

[creamyhorror]

Depends on the font I guess. In Firefox the font is serif and looks more like 亻+ 七.

[Glenn]

Yeah, it looks like 亻 + 匕 to me too. I'm on IE 8.

[jbradfor]

Don't feel bad Glenn, the unicode standard agrees with you.

[Glenn]

Nice! I'll only feel bad for being on IE 8, then!

[anonymoose]

the unicode standard agrees with you

But nciku.com doesn't, and neither does the print edition of 现代汉语词典 or 新世纪汉英大词典.

In fact it seems like both 七 and 匕 can look either way, depending on the font. (The way I'm seeing it, both look like 七 qi.) I was always under the impression that the two strokes shouldn't cross if its 匕 bi (which it seems should be the case in 化), but clearly it is drawn as 七 qi in some (most?) printed materials.

[imron]

the unicode standard agrees with you

Actually, it doesn't. The unicode standard doesn't make any mention of what a character should look like. From the FAQ:

Q: If the character shapes are different in different parts of East Asia, why were the characters unified?

A: The Unicode standard is designed to encode characters, not glyphs. Even where there are substantial variations in the standard way of writing a character from locale to locale, if the fundamental identity of the character is not in question, then a single character is encoded in Unicode.

and

Using a single font for all four locales allows the characters to be legible, but means that some characters may look odd. For optimal results a system localized for use in Japan, for example, should use a font designed explicitly for use with Japanese, rather than a generic Unihan font

So, the character shown as an image in the Unihan database will be using some font, but that is not to say it is the correct font for the language you are wanting to use, and it is not to say that this is how the character is supposed to look all the time.

[roddy]

万灵论 wànlínglùn, animism.

[skylee]

蘋果教主 = Steve Jobs

[jbradfor]

Or 史蒂夫・喬布斯?

[jbradfor]

九曲花街

Hint: it's a place in San Francisco.

[roddy]

Nine Bendy-Flower Street?

案头, àntóu -

desk or tabletop

[roddy]

Wow, well over a thousand posts in here now. Not all new words, obviously. Anyway, to mark these heights:

等高线, děnggāoxiàn - contour lines on a map.

[anonymoose]

霹雳舞 pīlìwǔ breakdance

[renzhe]

闺蜜

http://baike.baidu.com/view/266169.htm

As far as I can tell, it is a trendy name young girls use to refer to a close female friend. Not in nciku.

[heifeng]

鹁鸪： bo2gu1: (斑鸠 (ban1jiu1) 亦称“勃鸠” (bo2jiu1)、“鹁鸪”）： Turtle Dove ( a type of pigeon). Reference : 各种鸽子相关文章介绍大全

And from 百度：

鹁鸪图片

鹁鸪 （bó gū ) 鸟，即斑鸠，羽毛黑褐色，天要下雨或刚晴的时候，常在树上咕咕地叫。也叫水鸪鸪。

Encountered here (as usually, there was at least one bird related word.... )

[heifeng]

So this random word comes with a random story since I think it is funny how I officially learned this word in Chinese first, and then heard it in English...and BOTH occured yesterday.

Yesterday I read this article: 一踩地就痛 足底筋膜炎作祟 ahh, so 足底筋膜炎 is Plantar Fasciitis. Good to know, sounds like it sucks, me thinks.

And then I went to a dance class and the teacher was telling us all about Plantar Fasciitis.

Now it is possible I've heard it before in English and tuned it out, but this just goes to show you Random words aren't always so random...if you listen you will hear them (in one language or another)

(I also read about Purpura/ 紫斑症 here yesterday but haven't heard it in conversation.... yet)

[roddy]

Well, I'll see your plantar fasciitis and raise you 髂脛束磨擦綜合症 [iliotibial Band (ITB) Syndrome].

[heifeng]

How about some 静脉曲张 Varicose veins, from this article: 研究：女性每天跳跃 可增骨密度 (well, the bottom of the article that is...as in don't hop around if you have 'em)

[Kyle_Wang]

to #1135 : 闺蜜 is quite similar to BFF in English, at least that is the word I often use to interpret BFF, because 永远最好的朋友 is too long......