Names
The character 書 (shū) means script in this context, and the character 草 (cǎo) means quick, rough or sloppy. Thus, the name of this script is literally "rough script" or "sloppy script". The same character 草 (cǎo) appears in this sense in the noun "rough draft" (草稿, cǎogǎo), and the verb "to draft " (草擬, cǎonǐ). The other, indirectly related, meaning of the character 草 (cǎo) is grass, which has led to the alternate and literal translation "grass script", even though this does not correlate with the meaning of the original name. While the second translation is not accurate, it is still sometimes used in some sources to refer to this script.
Read more about this topic: Cursive Script (East Asia)
Famous quotes containing the word names:
“All nationalisms are at heart deeply concerned with names: with the most immaterial and original human invention. Those who dismiss names as a detail have never been displaced; but the peoples on the peripheries are always being displaced. That is why they insist upon their continuity—their links with their dead and the unborn.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“There are names written in her immortal scroll at which Fame blushes!”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
“In a time of confusion and rapid change like the present, when terms are continually turning inside out and the names of things hardly keep their meaning from day to day, it’s not possible to write two honest paragraphs without stopping to take crossbearings on every one of the abstractions that were so well ranged in ornate marble niches in the minds of our fathers.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)