走時

[Insectosaurus]

Hi,

 

I don't like starting threads for small stuff, but couldn't find a "short questions" thread, the closest I came was the new word thread, I don't know what's more fitting, since it's not a new word per se. I'm just wondering what's the most relevant  usage of 走時? Most dictionaries (Oxford, Xiandai Guifan) tells me it's "keep time", like a watch keeps time. The ABC tells me it's that and to be in luck (ortographic). The KEY dictionary, which is the one I use for my flaschards (definitions especially for Chengyu are above and beyond those of ABC), only gives me "be in luck", and doesn't mention anything of the other entry, not even by another reading (which is the case for ABC and mi1shu vs m1shu1 (secretary vs secret book).

[7800]

Most of the time, when I don't know a word or term, I try to look for examples in a sentence rather than looking at its definition. It might sound obvious, but that's not my approach simply because it gives a better understanding of where the new word goes in a sentence.

 When a word has many meanings, example sentences can help you discover which meanings are more common, because those common meanings will be more frequent among the example sentences. Have in mind that this might not work that well for colloquial usages of a word.

 From what I've seen, 走时 seems to mean 走的时候, "when sb. leave", most of the time.

[Insectosaurus]

I certainly use example sentences a lot to check for context, but as you said, it might skew the results away from colloquial speech.

 

When it comes to my own learning I would probably regard 走时 as in 走的时候 to be two words, rather than one, and therefore not something I would study as a vocabulary, but that is up for debate, I guess.

[7800]

Yeah, I totally agree with you, I wouldn't regard this 走时 as a word, but I believe it is its most relevant use. 

I don't really know what motivates your question, so I assumed you saw 走时 somewhere and didn't really understand what it meant in that context. Now, if 走时 definitely has to be a single word, I believe "to keep time" probably is its most frequent meaning, because most sentences I can find all seem to indicate that.

[Insectosaurus]

Sorry, it's me who should have been more clear. I always use imron's Chinese Text Analyser to import vocabulary when I'm about to read a book or something. That means some words get wrongly parsed, but since every word only can appear once in my Flaschard program, it is important for me to never treat it as wrongly parsed anyway, but rather an existing word. Therefore I can not treat 走时 as 走的时候 even if that's probably what I''m going to encounter in the book. I only add true words, even if it was wrongly parsed from the beginning. Therefore I needed to know how to treat 走时, since my go-to-dictionary does not agree with Xiandai Gufian (which always scares me a bit).

 

I agree that 走时 seems to mostly mean what Xiandai Guifan tells us, but I hoped there was an explanation for KEY only including the "be in luck"-definition. ?

[Publius]

I really don't understand how someone's mind can work in such a linear and inflexible way.  If you want to make sure 走时 is a real word and not some segmentation error made by CTA's parser, all you have to do is open the text in a text editor, find the sentence where it appears, post the whole sentence here if you're still not sure.  What's the point in listing all the definitions given by different dictionaries?  Seriously, are you a test program for our machine overlords?  Have you passed the Turing test?  Oh, and since it's been 17 months, would you be so kind as to update us on your findings?

[Insectosaurus]

On 12/18/2021 at 4:30 AM, Publius said:

I really don't understand how someone's mind can work in such a linear and inflexible way.

 

Bumping a 17 month old thread just to be a bit rude?

[Publius]

On 12/18/2021 at 4:50 PM, Insectosaurus said:

Bumping a 17 month old thread just to be a bit rude?

Yes.  Slow weekend.  Did you find the sentence?