留

[rockytriton]

I'm not quite sure the meaning of this character... zhongwen.com says "leave, stay, delay", but when I use rosetta stone, it uses a sentence like "他留着长发", which seems to mean "He has long hair". So, I'm not sure how one of these definitions fits in here, maybe there is something that zhongwen.com is leaving out?

[HashiriKata]

A word may sometimes have several meanings and those meanings aren't necessarily related.

The meaning of the 留 in the sentence you quoted is, however, related to "leave, stay, delay" (Well, it also depends on what you think these words actually mean, because they are translation without context and can therefore be meaningless sometimes! ). Let me try stretching things a bit to show you the connection:

"他留着长发" = he keeps/ maintains long hair => "He has long hair"

[Quest]

留: 保留的留 -- to keep

[semantic nuance]

留 reminds me of a story told when I was a kid. The story is about a kindhearted host who accommodates a stranger in the rainy days for he feels for the stranger. The host plans to send the stranger away when the weather is fair. However, it keeps raining, and the stranger doesn't show any sign to leave. The host wants the stranger to go but feels embarrassed to be too outfrank. Then a very good idea comes across his mind. He writes down a sentence without punctuations. He writes:下雨天留客天天留我不留 He puts the note on the table, hoping that the stranger will see it for himself and leaves the house automatically. It doesn't occurr to the host that the stranger rewrites the sentence by adding punctuations into it. What the host intends to mean in the sentence is 「下雨天，留客天；天留，我不留！」, literally translated as (Rainy days, days to keep guests; Heaven keeps them, I don't!) However, the stranger rewrites the sentence as :「下雨天，留客天；天留我不？留！」literally translated as (rainy days, days to keep guests; Heaven keeps me or not? Yes (keep)!) The host cannot do anything but let the stranger stay in the house, willynilly.

Just a thought!