Random Character of the Day

[Jim]

6 hours ago, roddy said:

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

Lockdown over! Back down to stringent entry checks. But been forced to flick through the classics to relieve the boredom, hence the antique characters. Going through the Zuo Tradition with a parallel translation.

[Tomsima]

怹

 

Yes, it is the honorific form of 他, 'tan1', something I never knew existed - how blissfully these years have passed in the ignorance of thinking that 您 was the only one, unique in its politeness among all the other vulgar pronouns. Perhaps only 祂 might come close, but 怹 has really knocked me for six!

[roddy]

Wow, where 您 find that?

[Tomsima]

4 minutes ago, roddy said:

Wow, where 您 find that?

 

It popped up in the 赵元任 grammar, which if anyone is interested, is an absolute goldmine of information. In fact, the more I read the more upset I find myself becoming that this book seems to have been 'forgotten' by the mainstream, its quite a phenomenal work. 

[大块头]

 

1 hour ago, Tomsima said:

怹

 

Some context: As per the BLCU corpus 怹 is the 9204th most common character, with a frequency of 0.019 per million characters.

[Tomsima]

3 hours ago, 大块头 said:

with a frequency of 0.019 per million characters

 

I'll check in again next time I come across the character, maybe when Roddy is doing site upgrades from his bedside in the retirement home...watch this space

[大块头]

Came across another highly specific third person pronoun (that's 30 times more common than 怹):

 

 

Spoiler

祂

tā

He (used to refer to deities, especially the Abrahamic god)

 

[Tomsima]

On 3/4/2021 at 8:03 PM, Tomsima said:

Perhaps only 祂 might come close

?

[大块头]

Ugh, I missed that!

[Jim]

勰 xié which means concord or harmony and mostly appears in names apparently. I saw it in the name of a Eastern Wei author 贾思勰 who wrote this interesting treatise on household husbandry and farming: http://www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Science/qiminyaoshu.html

[Tomsima]

嬲

"to be mad at someone, get angry". Seems like it's a Canto only character (nau1), but thought it was pretty funny!

[Jim]

 I see Baidu Hanyu says it's used in Inner Mongolian and north Shanxi dialect too, "内蒙古以及晋北方言中，意为神气、得意，或志得意满之意。" which is quite different!

[calculatrix]

Cedict and handedict have something like "to tease", and unihan also has "to flirt", which is even more funny for this pictographic constellation. 

I like it ?

[Jim]

蕤 ruí Saw is as the name of a sleazy actor just been sent to prison for a sexual assault, base meaning 《说文》：“蕤，草木华垂貌 but also the stamen of flower, flowers more generally and a pendant ornament (because like a drooping flower) apparently.

[Tomsima]

From what I can see its used in modern Chinese as in 葳蕤. Thats really interesting, as it has two main meanings:

1. 形容枝葉繁密，草木茂盛的樣子

2. 形容委靡不振，慵懶怠惰

(source)

 

So it sounds like the use of the character 蕤 brings out the nature of the person in question (presumably 吴亦凡)  - that is 'luxurious' yet 'indolent, in low spirits'!

[Jim]

39 minutes ago, Tomsima said:

So it sounds like the use of the character 蕤 brings out the nature of the person in question (presumably 吴亦凡)

No, this is another one, 田蕤, known more for his stage work apparently. https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1708329101177946305&wfr=spider&for=pc

[calculatrix]

Since I am still a newbie characterwise, I get easily impressed with the pictographic storytelling kind.

Leisurely browsing through character databases I found these two:

氽 : to float

氼 : to drown

Love them.

[Demonic_Duck]

@calculatrix those are awesome. But bear in mind that many of those really nice pictographic storytelling type characters aren't in common usage. It looks like 氼 is an obsolete variant of the much more common 溺, and 氽 is dialectical.

 

You might also like some of these: 屎、尿、囚、忐忑、凹凸

[Tomsima]

醺

 

Turned up in 微醺 in reading today. Fairly innocuous and easy to guess the meaning, but found it quite interesting that I've managed to not bump into this character in reading over the years (or not notice bumping into it and saving it for study at least), as I would guess it's certainly not as rare as most of the previous characters posted.

[Tomsima]

覡

xi2 

 

This came up in modern reading, but it is a character from 國語：“在男曰覡，在女曰巫“