Random Character of the Day

[Dlezcano]

搋 chuai1, to unblock a drain with a suction pump.

It is most commonly seen in the word 皮搋子, which means "rubber suction pump". Actually I heard that word hundreds of times, but I never bothered checking the character till today. It seems not many Chinese know that character either.

[Tomsima]

first time for me coming across the word, I presume it's the Chinese equivalent of 'plunger', but having little reason to talk about plumbers in Chinese I've just never studied it before. Interestingly, my wife didn't know the word or the character, and appears to never have used a plunger before either! So now I'm left wondering where others/you have heard this word hundreds of times before, are you a plumber by trade?

[Dlezcano]

I am not a plumber but it seems I had bad luck with the canalizations in the apartments I lived at, so my wife (and I) had to use the 皮搋子 many times. By the way it also has other uses like fixing dents on cars.

[Demonic_Duck]

I remember looking up that word a few years ago, finding 搋子, attempting to use the word, not being understood, and eventually being told that people usually just call it 塞马桶的. But it looks like it might just be one of those words with a million different ways of saying it. Baidu Baike also lists 马桶拔子、厕所泵、水拔子, and the delightful 拔粪宝.

[Tomsima]

 瀫

 

just got this in the phrase 波瀫鄰鄰 pop up later in my book on tea, onomatopoeic water sound hu2, looks pretty intimidating, and not in my ms kaiti font on pleco which usually suggests its a pretty rare character.

[Polyhistor]

If anybody can type out my character, that would be nice. I can't seem to find it. Specifically the one that looks like da or ta and is between the 将 and 念 and 放. My Chinese friend suggested it could be a variant on 疙瘩. It's from chapter three of 三遂平妖传, the original 罗贯中 recension.

[roddy]

Here we go: ?

Unicode.org's radical search is my go-to for this kind of look up, although the site is suffering security errors and broken images at the moment. Bear in mind that's the 肉 radical, not 月, and it's just a stroke-counting exercise from there. 

 

 

[Jim]

43 minutes ago, roddy said:

Bear in mind that's the 肉 radical, not 月, and it's just a stroke-counting exercise from there. 

Gives the radical as 月 here: http://zidian.odict.net/1176077639234/ The plot thickens, like 疙瘩汤

[roddy]

Yeah, but that site does the same for 腥, which is surely 肉? The plot remains, like my morning porridge, thin.

 

In fact, that site finds a mere 28 meaty characters, and 1323 lunar ones. Compare to Unicode where... well, they don't give numbers but they look to be roughly the opposite.

[Jim]

You's expect meat for the fleshy lump meaning too.

[Tomsima]

abc: "radical 130 肉; ? has 4 radical strokes, and 9 residual strokes"

[roddy]

茕茕孑立 - 茕 was new and, if it will forgive me for saying so, a bit weird-looking, so thought I'd share it.

[Demonic_Duck]

䦊

 

Unihan gives this as "an appliance for walking on the sands (as boat for river; car for highway)", which makes it a clear winner for the most steampunk ancient Chinese character I've seen.

[Tomsima]

眚 sheng3 literary character for 'disaster'. I'm on mobile so will try and remember to write more later

[Dlezcano]

洇 Yin1, the way how a liquid spreads and is absorbed when it gets in contact with paper or cloth. I saw it the other day while watching a video about Chinese calligraphy.

For example 这里洇墨太严重；洇瞎掉了。

[roddy]

繭 is fun. 

[Tomsima]

甪 lu4

 

came up in the word 甪端, the name of a mythical beast who had the power to detect truth or lies, and can run very fast apparently. It often appears depicted in the form of bronzes, censors.

 

legend has it 秦始皇 wanted a mythical beast, and so this hybrid was found/created. A minister named it 角端 which apparently wasn't good enough, so 角 was changed to 甪 as the beast was a 獨角 (角 -> 甪 is supposedly removing one of the horns)

[Jim]

矧（shěn）：况且

Had occasion to check something in Bai Juyi's essay about his Thatched Cottage on Mount Lu, where it appears: https://baike.baidu.com/item/庐山草堂记/

 

Zdic says it can also mean the gums: https://www.zdic.net/hans/矧

[Jim]

歃  shà  to smear one's mouth with the blood of the sacrifice when making an oath. I like to share all my really useful vocab here!

[roddy]

Things going a bit rural in lockdown there, Jim? How's the wicker man coming on?