藏(hide)

[bossidy]

My dictionary provides what seems to me a curious use of 藏 (hide):

躲藏处 = hide, meaning the skin of an animal

Is there some cultural connotation here that a skin 'hides' the animal inside?

[skylee]

What dictionary is it?

[adrianlondon]

Hide does mean the skin of an animal - most dictionaries will list it.

You can check the history of words by putting "etymology " into google or some other such search engine.

For example ...

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=hide&searchmode=none

It appears that the common link is "cover".

[self-taught-mba]

The best thing in the world for a Chinese character etymologies is of course the ABC dictionary by John DeFrancis. The software Wenlin uses it also and is a great investment. They cost about $150 but it is worth so much because I can answer things in place of a tutor in so many instances.

[adrianlondon]

Ah, I see. Seems I looked at it from the wrong end, so to speak. Was it the Chinese character that was under research? I thought it was the English word "hide". Oh well. My reply might be useful in the future to someone with the right question ;)

[foodtarget]

I checked both an online dictionary (nciku.com) and my 现代汉语词典 (which doubles as a doorstop) and couldn't find any use of the character 藏 in a word meaning "animal hide". I'm also curious to know what dictionary you're looking in, cuz I'm tempted to say that it's whack, but I'm def not a Chinese expert.

Anyway, in my dictionary there was a phrase 无处躲藏 meaning "no place to hide", so it seems logical to assume that 躲藏处 means "hiding place." Again, I'm not positive that I'm right, but I just can't find any indication that 藏 can refer to an animal hide...

[achiese]

This is really interesting!

My best guess is in cave period, hunters must fur themselves to hide in order to

ambush the prey.

In that ancient time when dinosaur still crawled in the ground, hiding and furring should

mean the same thing.

That may be the reason why hide could also mean the skin of animal.

I tried to find if there is a smirlar case in chinese or not, I think I got one.

"裝" seems to have the same concept as "hide".

"裝" could mean clothing and pretending.

Clothing is derived from animal's skin.

Pretending is a hunting skill which is wearing fur to fool animals.

Ok, whether it's true or not, now I am going to remark this in the list of my ten great

discoveries.

How do you say.

[foodtarget]

Great discoveries or great inventions? Your reasoning seems a bit of stretch, but I guess it's possible. It seems equally plausible that 装 means both "clothing" and "pretend" because of something to do with costumes, like in the theater perhaps. On second thought, were Chinese characters even developed when people were still living in caves, wrapping up in fur, and clubbing wild animals? I seem to recall that the Chinese already had a dynastic system, agriculture, and domesticated livestock by the time Oracle Bone Script was in use. So it seems unlikely that the modern meaning of a character would have its basis in the daily life of prehistoric man.

[achiese]

Lol, I was just kidding about the discovery. Don't take it too seriously.

I think no matter when our ancestor invent character, it won't change the

fact we are using a living language which has already evolved for thousands

of year. The language existed long ago before the chacacters were invented.

To find the clue of ancient origin that remains in modern language certainly

is not easy but not impossible.

Foodtarget, you live in Xiamen, I guess you might be able to speak 閩南語.

閩南語 is the dialect which keeps the most antediluvian traits, some of the

traits could even be traced back to han dynasty.

Is it possible we can find any word derived form the language in cave period?

I am not linguist, I don't know if there is a such word in chinese or not.

But I do know a case. That is basque.

Basque is the descendant of cromagnon. Cromagnon has been the europen indigene

from cave period before indo-european groups entered europe.

Cromagnon even ever met neanderthal who died out long ago.

In modern basque language, the word for knife is literally " stone for cut".

The word for ceiling means "top of the cavern".

That's a vivid exemple of the origin of cave period.

I think chinese didn't suddenly appear in sang dynasty, our ancestors also

use language before sang dynasty.

It is inevitable that some vague vistige might still remains.

You know in chinese buying and selling share the same sound, in some dialects

they even have the same tone.

In the ancient time, "買" and "賣" are the same word and the same thing, whcih is

just bartering. Bartering finally resulted in two characters.

Then how do you think the vistige could be traced back before the characters were

invented yet?

[Lu]

Looks like a wrong backtranslation to me. 藏 means to hide, hide means skin of an animal, someone seems to have missed the fact that that's a different hide.

Which dictionary is that, so we can avoid it?

[bossidy]

Yes, I checked a few dictionaries and none of them had "躲藏处", so it looks like there is no weirdness to be had in Chinese.

Now that I think about it, the weirdness is in the English -- not the Chinese. I'll go off and find some English forum to post the issue. Thanks for your responses.

[creamyhorror]

What I don't understand is how so many people took the original post's definition as necessarily accurate. Some of the more terrible Chinese-English dictionaries have ridiculous mistakes that were clearly a result of a complete lack of knowledge of English. I recall reading about one error that resulted in the use of some extremely strange English word on signboards in China. What's worse is that dictionaries copy from each other, resulting in the error being perpetuated like a pest.

Use Dict.cn for your lookups, it's a great and accurate resource and has example sentences for most words, rendering it incredibly useful.

[LaoLiang]

Nice creamyhorror,

Here's from dict.cn:

"3. 男学生问老师什么是皮革。她说“hide”。他问老师为什么叫他躲藏。这个故事用了双关语。

The boy asked his teacher what leather was and she said,"Hide". He asked why she told him to hide. The story plays on words."