480531170

1398
L1
傘
SAN, kasa
umbrella,parasol
12 strokes
SANKA-affiliated
amagasaumbrella
higasa parasol
1399
L1
斬
11
ZAN, kiru
kill by sword/ blade,
behead
strokes
kiriaicrossing swords
ZANSHUdecapitation
tsujigiri beheading stranger
A late, post-Shuowen graph. Based on a
pictograph of an opened umbrella or parasol.
OT1968:76; SS1984:352. Suggest as ‘ten’ 35
plus ’person’ 41 x 4 as ‘four (people)’.
Mnemonic: UMBRELLA COVERS FOURTEEN
PERSONS!
Seal ; a late graph (Shuowen). Analyses
diverge. One view takes as 33 ‘vehicle’
and 1233 ‘ax; cut, chop’, to give ‘cut timber
and make a cart/carriage’ (Gu, Shirakawa).
Alternatively, analyzed as ‘ax; cut’ with
as phonetic with associated sense ‘cut off
(with halberd)’, giving ‘cut off with ax’ (Katō).
GY2008:603-4; KJ1970:632.
Mnemonic: CHOPPING UP VEHICLE LEADS TO
BEHEADING
1400
暫
ZAN, shibaraku
a while, briefly
L1
15 strokes
ZANTEITEKItentative
ZANJIshort time
shibarakushite after a while
1401
旨
SHI, mune, umai
good, tasty, gist
L1
6 strokes
umakusmartly, cleverly
umamiflavor
HONSHImain purpose
OBI ; seal . Has ‘spoon’ or possibly
(OBI and bronze stages) (in its original
sense ‘pronged spoon’; see 522) over what
at the OBI stage was typically 22 ‘mouth’
or – less commonly – 1139 (‘sweet’: original
sense ‘have something in the mouth and think
it good’), either way giving ‘put something in
Seal ; a late graph (Shuowen). Has 66
‘day’, and 1399 (‘behead, kill’) as phonetic
with associated sense ‘a little’, giving ‘a short
time; for the moment’. TA1965:853; KJ1970:443;
OT1968:474; WD1974:367-8.
Mnemonic: THIS DAY, IN A WHILE, I AM TO BE
BEHEADED – HOW BRIEF IS LIFE
the mouth and think it good’, i.e. ‘tasty, delicious’.
By the seal stage, was established
as the lower element, but subsequently this
was changed in shape to 66 ‘day, sun’; at
that stage, the difference in shape between
and was quite small. The graph
was borrowed as a convenient way of writing
a homophonous word in early Chinese
meaning ‘basic idea, gist’. MS1995:v1:608-
9,154-5,v2:864-6; KJ1970:465; SS1984:363;
AS2007:617. We suggest taking the upper part
as a sitting person and the lower as sun.
Mnemonic: THE GIST IS THAT THIS PERSON
THINKS IT’S GOOD TO SIT IN SUN
414 The Remaining 1130 Characters