Meaning
Some academics have criticised the usage of the word radical because of its supposed ambiguity. At one time radical referred to the semantic component of a Chinese character, because most (but not all) dictionary section headers are closely linked with the meaning of the characters listed under them. There is a widespread perception that the character elements used as section headers are always, by definition, semantic in their role, but this is not always the case. For example, 木 ("tree"), a common character element with semantic purpose in many characters, is actually phonetic in the character 沐 ("bathe", "wash"), and the character's meaning-bearing radical is the left-hand element, 氵, "water". Another common misunderstanding is that radical means any component of a character. But this is inconsistent with all of its various historical uses.
Read more about this topic: Radical (Chinese Character)
Famous quotes containing the word meaning:
“More significant than the fact that poets write abstrusely, painters paint abstractly, and composers compose unintelligible music is that people should admire what they cannot understand; indeed, admire that which has no meaning or principle.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“The literature of the poor, the feelings of the child, the philosophy of the street, the meaning of household life, are the topics of the time. It is a great stride. It is a sign,—is it not? of new vigor, when the extremities are made active, when currents of warm life run into the hands and the feet.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Unlike Freud, Jung did not believe that a dream is a mask for a meaning already known but deceitfully withheld from the conscious mind. In his view, dreams were communication, ideas expressed not always straightforwardly, but in the best way possible within the limits of the medium. Dreaming, in Jung’s psychology, is a constructive process.”
—Jeremy Campbell (b. 1931)