480531170

470
L3
希
KI, KE
desire, rare
7 strokes
KIBŌwish
KIKYŪdesire
KIHAKUthinness
Bronze ; seal ; late graph (Shuowen). The
seal form onwards has NJK (‘towel’), originally
depicting a scrap of cloth, but as Katō
and Yamada point out the bronze predecessor
of this graph has a more elaborate element,
taken to represent embroidered cloth; this
combines with showing interwoven threads.
Yamada takes ‘rare’ as a loan usage (Ogawa
considers original sense of to be ‘fine weave
[of fabric]’, and by extension ‘extremely small;
rare’); ‘desire’ is also a loan usage. KJ1970:6 87;
YK1976:111; OT1968:315; MS1995:v2:1514-5;
ZY2009:v4:1654.
Mnemonic: INTERWOVEN CLOTH THREADS
DESIRABLE BUT RARE
471
L3
季
KI
season, young
8 strokes
KISETSUseason
SHIKIthe four seasons
KIKANquarterly publication
OBI ; seal . Views vary. 87 ‘grain plant’
(note: not necessarily just rice – Qiu takes it
to denote foxtail millet, grown widely in NW
China from ancient times), and 27 ‘child’,
which Yamada treats as semantic and phonetic,
meaning ‘young’, to give ‘young grain’, and
believes the association with crops was later
lost and the sense ‘child’ came to prominence,
giving ‘young child’. Katō is in broad agreement,
but chooses to follow the Shuowen assessment
in regarding as an abbreviation of 1700
‘young’. Schuessler notes use of in bronze
texts already to mean ‘young, youngest (of
persons)’, with ‘season, three-month period’ as a
much later sense (Tang period). Three months is
roughly the period needed for grains such as
barley and millet to grow and ripen. YK1976:112;
KJ1970:244; AS2007:298; MS1995:v1:350-52.
Mnemonic: GRAIN PLANTS IN SEASON GROW
LIKE YOUNG CHILDREN
472
紀
KI
adding determinative ‘thread’ 29. Yamada
chronicle, start
treats the sense ‘record, chronicle’ as loan usage,
L1
9 strokes
but alternatively it may be extended usage
on the basis of the thread of continuity in an
KIGEN epoch, era
account or record. As Qiu notes – with reference
KIKŌ travelogue
to Chinese – there is some overlap in usage of
GOSEIKI fifth century
and 115 ‘account, record’, and this may also be
the case in Japanese. KJ1970:234; YK1976:112;
OT1968:766; QX2000:297-8; AS2007:298.
Seal ; late graph (Shuowen). Has 866
(modern meaning ‘self’) in broad original sense
of ‘length of thread’ (Yamada takes as phonetic
also) with meaning extended to ‘beginning’
(one of the ends of the thread), later clarified by
Mnemonic: THREADS IN CHRONICLE OF
ONESELF START FROM BEGINNING
473
喜
KI, yorokobu
OBI ; seal . Typically interpreted as 22
rejoice, happy
‘mouth’, with functioning as semantic and
L3
12 strokes
phonetic with original sense ‘sprouts of vegetation
newly emerged from the ground’, to give ‘put
KIGEKIcomedy
soft, cooked food in the mouth’. (It may also have
KANKIdelight
a connection with a food vessel 379.) It should
ōyorokobigreat joy
be noted that Mizukami, Yamada, and Katō treat
as phonetic only, and with this analysis, ‘be
162 The 200 Fourth Grade Characters