Continuing with our "Shuowen Jiezi" course, this lesson only talks about one character, that is, the "㱙" of the "歺" part. Modern Chinese has replaced "㱙" with "朽". The word "朽" is a commonly used Chinese character in modern Chinese, which was included in the List of Commonly Used Words in Modern Chinese promulgated by the State Language Commission in 1988.
㱙 (decay). There are two pronunciations:
(1) xiǔ. This is the pronunciation marked by the phonetic version of "Shuowen Jie Zi" of Zhonghua Book Company, and the explanation given is: "㱙, rot also." From the beginning, the voice. rotten, terrison or from wood. "Morphophonetic characters. The original meaning is rot.
"Shuowen" does not have a separate prefix for "decay", and "decay" is the text or style of "㱙". Duan Yuci's "Commentary on the Text": "Today's characters are decayed and wasted. "Takada Zhongzhou (Japanese) "Ancient Chapters" volume 42: "Cover people are rotten, and wood is rotten." The word should be different, and it is allowed to be both grass and trees. In ancient characters, "㱙" refers to the decay of human corpses, and "decay" refers to the decay of plants and trees. Later, the word "㱙" was abolished, and the word "decay" was commonly used, which refers to the decay of all things.
(Rotting Trees)
"The Song of the Five Sons": "To Lin Zhaomin, it is like a rotten rope to control six horses." Kong Chuan: "Rotten, rotten." "I rule over the people, and I am as frightened as six horses with rotting ropes. Of course, the rotten rope driving the horse is full of dangers, so as to describe Dayu's fearful and treadling psychological state as a monarch governing the people, in order to exhort the current monarch of the Xia Dynasty.
"The Analects of Gongyechang": "Rotten wood cannot be carved, and the wall of soil cannot be enclosed." "Rotten wood cannot be carved, and walls of dung walls cannot be painted. "Rotten wood cannot be carved" here later developed into an idiom to describe a person who is unruly or irretrievable. The word "decay" in it uses its original meaning, that is, decay.
(Kuchiki Kakuya)
In addition to the original meaning, there are other uses for decay:
(1) Aging. Such as: old decay. "Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Wei Zhi, and the Biography of Cao Shuang": "Although the minister is old, dare to forget the words of the past?" Although the minister is old and weak, how can he dare to forget the words he promised the first emperor? Li He's "Gift to Chen Shang": "There are men in Chang'an, and the twenty hearts are rotten. ”
(2) Abrasion; dissipation. "Zuo Chuan: Twenty-four Years of Xianggong": "There is great virtue, followed by meritorious service, followed by speech, although it has not been abandoned for a long time, this is immortal." "The highest is to establish virtue, followed by meritorious deeds, and then to establish speech. Being able to do this, even if you die, it will not be erased for a long time, this is called "immortality". The immortality of the people's heroes as we know them means that the meritorious deeds established by the people's heroes will never be erased.
(The People's Heroes Are Immortal)
(3) If the smell is absent. "Lü's Spring and Autumn Mengdong Ji": "Its taste is salty, and its stinky is rotten. Gao lure note: "The smell of water is also salty and rotten, and those who are salty and rotten are rotten." The meaning of this sentence is: (Mengdong Moon) The taste is salty, and the smell is rotten.
(4) The provincial name of "rotten pen". The rotten pen is used when the Chinese painting is drafted, the original manuscript is used with a clay pen, and the white soil is wrapped in a clear as the pen head, and it can be changed one by one when it is used, and it is determined to be rotten when it is counted to nine. In the Qing Dynasty, willow charcoal was used for drafting. Qing Dynasty Fang Xun "Mountain Quiet Dwelling Painting Theory": "Painting with decay, the ancients used it or not, most of the work was used for the picture, the dots and clusters were freehand, but there was no need to be immortal, and today's people take the pen as a thing to be able to do without decay." "The so-called rotten pen is actually a drawing with charcoal, similar to a pencil draft.
(2) guǎ. This pronunciation is only used for "㱙". Same as "咼 (剮)". Remove the meat. "Liezi Tang Wen": "There is a country of Yan people in the south of Chu, and their relatives die, and their flesh is abandoned, and then their bones are buried, and they become filial sons." Yin Jingshun explained: "The book is chopped, the sound is low, and the meat is also removed." "There is a Yanren country in the south of the Chu State, and when their parents died, they had to remove the flesh from their bodies and throw them away, and then bury their bones in the soil, which is considered filial piety.
(Demeating)
The small seal of 㱙 (decay) is written as shown in the figure:
(How to write the small seal of the character)
([Shuowen Jiezi] No. 796, some pictures come from the Internet, and the copyright belongs to the original copyright owner)