480531170

807
L1
弁
5
BEN
talk, braid, petal,
know, split, valve
strokes
BENTŌpacked lunch
BENRONdebate
BENMAKUvalve
Loan for traditional i] (bronze ; seal ) ii]
(seal ); iii] (seal ). (originally meaning
‘hands putting on a ceremonial cap’), has
been borrowed in modern Japanese usage for
its sound value BEN as a substitute graph for all
of the above three more complex graphs (and
indeed a number of others).
i] consists of 198 ‘knife’, with 辡 (two
tattooing needles associated with two parties
taking an oath, and to be used if oath broken
[Shirakawa]) as phonetic with associated sense
‘divide’, giving ‘divide by cutting with a knife’;
later generalized to ‘divide’, and extended to
‘discern, discriminate’.
ii] consists of 118 ‘words; speak’, with 辡
as phonetic, here with associated sense taken
either as ‘divide’, giving ‘analyze divided words
(between two parties)’ (Yamada), or as ‘dispute
between two parties’, giving ‘conclude a dispute
between two parties’ (Katō); sense extended to
‘speech, oration’.
iii] consists of ‘melon’ (NJK), and 辡 with
associated sense ‘divide’, giving ‘contents of
melon split in two’; subsequently generalised
to ‘divide into two, divide’, and extended to
‘discern, discriminate’.
There is also occasional use of as , with
thread 29, meaning ‘braid’. YK1976:447-8;
MS1995:v2:1278-9; KJ1970:853-4; OT1968:335;
SS1984:777; GY2008:210. Take the modern
graph as a nose and two ‘tens’ (35) =
‘twenty’.
Mnemonic: A TALK ABOUT TWENTY
NOSES – AND A VARIETY OF THINGS!?
808
L3
保
HO, HŌ, tamotsu
preserve, maintain
9 strokes
KAKUHOsecurity
HOZONpreservation
HOKENinsurance
OBI ; seal . Shows ‘person’ 41 with
infant carried on their back, with one stroke
(or two) lower down to represent swaddling
clothes. From the bronze stage, a single stroke
809
墓
BO, haka
grave
L1
13 strokes
BOCHIgraveyard
BOHYŌgrave marker
hakamairigrave visit
Seal ; late graph (Shuowen). Has 64 ‘soil,
ground, earth’, and (a graph comprising
66 ‘sun’ surrounded in old forms by multiple
for the clothes was sometimes changed to two,
and by the time of the block script this element
along with the raised arms of the small child
was corrupted into 73 (‘tree/wood’). Later,
the meaning ‘carry infant on the back’ gave
rise to extended senses such as ‘be at ease’,
‘take care of’, ‘maintain’, ‘preserve’. YK1976:450;
KJ1970:858-9; OT1968:67; AS2007:157. We suggest
taking as a box.
Mnemonic: PERSON PRESERVED IN WOODEN
BOX
plants, meaning ‘sunset’; the original way of
writing 982 ‘sunset’) as phonetic with associated
sense ‘cover’, to give ‘cover (corpse,
coffin) with soil’, and hence ‘grave’. YK1976:451;
KJ1970:775-6; OT1968:223. We suggest taking
as a variant of 56 ‘big’, with 53 ‘grass’,
64 ‘earth’ and 66 ‘sun’.
Mnemonic: SUN SHINES ON BIG GRASS-COV-
ERED EARTHEN GRAVE
254 The 185 Fifth Grade Characters