symbol for "dancing"

[lak]

Hi,

Im'm looking for a specific symbol for 'dancing' that actucaly means "without effort or opposition".

Erik Hawkins - a famous dancer - talk about it in his book "The Body is a Clear Place"

many thanks...

[renzhe]

The character for dance is 舞. The top part is indeed a modified 無 character (meaning "without"), and the bottom part is the radical which does mean "to oppose" or "error" when used as a character.

But I think that the interpretation of "without opposition" is probably one of those creative new-age stories rather than the true etymology. Here is an etymology for the character. That page is usually correct, AFAIK. According to it, 無 is used phonetically, and the 舛 radical apparently also means "footprints".

[Glenn]

This reminds me of one of the most widespread folk (or false) etymologies that I'm aware of: 止 in 武 doesn't mean "stop", but "footprints". So it isn't stopping the fighting, it's walking off with a spear in hand to go fight.

[lak]

thanks Renze, and its great to have the clarification. I hate to pass that kind of misinformation on and wanted to use it in my teaching - so a double thanks

[renzhe]

I'm not a sinologist and I might be wrong. Just think of it as a colourful story instead of the "true meaning" of the character, and it will make a nice anecdote you can pass on.

[daofeishi]

Colorful stories about the etymologies of Chinese characters and words are common, and usually they are dead wrong. Another example is 危机, the Chinese word for crisis, which is often said to be composed of the words for danger and opportunity. Nice story, but also completely wrong.

[Glenn]

That's a good one too. I originally read about that at Pinyininfo.com (http://pinyin.info/chinese/crisis.html, sited at the bottom of the Wikipedia article).