480531170

overall meaning ‘enjoy union’, with ‘extreme’
treated as an extended sense based on the
associated sensation of extreme pleasure.
Ogawa, by contrast, takes the bronze form of
very differently as depicting a pot on top
of a cooking stove, giving ‘cooking stove’, and
regarding ‘extreme’ as a loan use. Alternatively
again, Gu takes the graph as ‘taste something
in the mouth’ over what he considers to
be a ladle, giving ‘ladle something good to eat
into the mouth’. At the seal stage, the lower
element, the way of writing for which varied
somewhat in bronze, came to be written in
a shape very close to , leading to it in fact
being interpreted as in Shuowen. In the
modern form, the strokes of have been
joined to the lower element . KJ1970:208-
9; MS1995:v2:866-7,v1:160-61; OT1968:665;
GY2008:1157.
Mnemonic: SWEETLY MATCHED COUPLE
GREATLY IN LOVE
1553
L1
陣
JIN
(army) camp, position
10 strokes
JINTŌlead, van (army)
JINCHIposition
JINTSŪ labor pains
A late, post-Shuowen graph. Considered to
be derived from 1732 ‘arrange; explain’,
the original meaning of which is probably
best taken as ‘evenly pile up mounds of earth’
(Tōdō), and by extension ‘set out, display’. The
determinative when positioned on the left
also in itself often indicates piles of earth, as
well as ‘mound’ and ‘hill’ (262). Qiu points out
that if the two final strokes of are written
as one (when the graph is written cursively),
the resultant shape is , and this was then
adopted in place of to clearly represent
the word ‘battle array’. This view of evolving
from through cursivization is also
supported by Gu. Qiu also notes that because
vehicles played an important part in ancient
warfare, there is a semantic connection also
in the substitution of 33 ‘vehicle’ in this
graph in place of the phonetic 201 (‘east’).
‘(Military) position, camp’ are extended senses.
QX2000:327-8; GY2008:342-3; TA1965:757-
9; MS1995:v2:1396-8; FC1977:1082-3.
Mnemonic: VEHICLES AND EARTHEN
MOUNDS INDICATE ARMY CAMP
1554
L1
尋
12
JIN, tazuneru, hiro
inquire, seek, a
fathom
strokes
JINMONquestioning
JINJŌcommonplace
tazunedasu seek out
OBI ; seal . The OBI form shows a person
with arms stretched out against a flat surface,
giving ‘stretch out the arms’; by extension,
the length represented when arms stretched
out’. The English word ‘fathom’ originally
also derives from outstretched arms (later
standardized to six feet). (Tōdō includes in
word-family ‘get deep inside’, giving extended
sense ‘inquire’.) At the seal stage, the early
Chinese word concerned is written employing
the elements 2 ‘right’ (originally, ‘hand,
right hand’), plus 24 ‘left’ (originally, ‘left
hand’), together with (‘writing brush hairs’,
see 115 and 517) as phonetic with associated
sense ‘extend the arms’, giving overall meaning
‘stretch out the arms’, and then ‘length
span of outstretched arms’. When it came
to the clerical script, the element was
already being omitted, thus resulting in .
MS1995:v1:396-7; DJ2009:v1:260; KJ1970:581;
OT1968:288; SK1984:235; TA1965:789-93. We
suggest taking 彐 as one hand, as another
hand 920, as ‘opening’ 22, and 125 ‘work’.
Mnemonic: INQUIRE ABOUT OPENING FOR
WORKING HANDS
The Remaining 1130 Characters 461