480531170

723
L3
示
JI, SHI, shimesu
show, indicate
5 strokes
ANJIhint
TENJIdisplay
shimeshidiscipline
OBI forms , ; seal . Originally a pictogram
of an altar (also shown as ) for sacrifice
to the gods. Theories about the shorter top
horizontal line vary, and include a sacrifice, an
ancestral tablet, or a deity image. The two lower
sloping strokes are taken to indicate blood
from a sacrifice, or ritual wine used for cleansing
an offering. Despite some divergence on
points of detail, there is agreement on the basic
meaning of this graph as an altar. ‘Show’ may be
an extended sense, related to outcome of the
ritual involved. MS1995:v2:936-7; YK1976:226;
KJ1970:446-7; GY2008:132; OT1968:717;
AS2007:467.
Mnemonic: DROPS FROM ALTAR SHOW
SACRIFICE
724
似
JI, niru
resemble
L3
7 strokes
RUIJIHINimitation
ese-*sham, phoney
niaube suited
Bronze ; seal . Seal form has 41 ‘person’,
and or (not to be confused with katakana
) (originally possibly a person with a plow
725
識
SHIKI
knowledge
L3
19 strokes
JŌSHIKIcommon sense
ISHIKIawareness
CHISHIKIJINintellectual
OBI form A ( 戠 ) ; OBI form B ; seal .
Typically taken to be 118 ‘words, language’
added as determinative at the seal stage to
the older CO graph 戠 , which is usually taken
as ‘cut branch/stake thrust into the ground’
(later written ; Mizukami regards ‘halberd’
[see 545] as an error for 311 ‘stake’); 戠 then
functions in as semantic and phonetic with
the meaning ‘flag, marker’, to give ‘flag/marker
with text attached to stake set into the ground’.
This, it is thought, was a device to convey
orders or directions to those coming from afar,
and from their perspective provided a means
[i.e. ‘farmer], but see 443) as phonetic with
associated sense ‘same appearance’, to give ‘a
person’s appearance is the same as another’s’,
hence ‘resemble’. KJ1970:479,13; YK1976:229;
MS1995:v1:54-5; OT1968:151. Mnemonically
challenging, but we suggest taking the right
hand and left hand elements as persons, and
the central element as a plow.
Mnemonic: TWO PERSONS AND SOMETHING
RESEMBLING A PLOW
of finding out information, thereby leading to
the extended meaning ‘find out, know’. Mizukami,
by contrast, proposes as OBI equivalent
for not OBI (A) above but OBI (B), though
this is perhaps best regarded as a tentative
correspondence, as it does look rather more
like a flat surface held up by two hands rather
than by a stake or branch, and the latter is the
interpretation made by Gu, who lists OBI (B) as
instead being the earliest predecessor not of
but of (see 728). Katō notes that is one
of those graphs which historically has given
rise to numerous different interpretations.
MS1995:v2:1210-11,v1:540-41; KJ1970:310;
YK1976:233-4; GY2008:513,1514; OT1968:943.
As a mnemonic, we suggest taking the modern
graph as 118 ‘words’, 6 ‘sound’, and 545
‘halberd’.
Mnemonic: HAVE KNOWLEDGE OF A WORD
SOUNDING LIKE ‘HALBERD’
232 The 185 Fifth Grade Characters