0086 去

去

This character means ‘leave, go away.’ The Japanese pronunciation is KYO or saru and the Chinese is qù.

The upper part,

土,

means ‘earth, soil, ground, land, the earth.’ The lower part,

厶,

once represented the cocoon of a silkworm. However, there are other explanations for this character. Wieger says that the upper part was the lid of an empty vessel, the lower part, and the concept was that whatever was in the pot would leave the pot.

Sears sees the lower part as an enclosure, but sees the upper part as a man leaving an enclosure. Here are some of the archaic versions of the character:

    

One can see in them justification for any or all of these concepts.

0085 恐

恐

This character means ‘fear, terrible.’ It’s pronounced KYŌ, osoreru, osoroshii, or kowai in Japanese, and it’s kǒng in Chinese.

The lower figure,

心,

means ‘heart, mind, soul,’ which are the parts of a person which become afraid or terrified.

The upper figure,

巩,

is just there as a phonetic clue, however. It means ‘bind, firm, secure, strong, which doesn’t provide much help in remembering the meaning of today’s character...unless we can remember both, with a little story about a heart being bound, i.e., constricted by fear. The upper left portion,

工,

means ‘work, labor,’ and is pronounced gōng in Chinese, by the way. It’s the ‘gong’ in ‘qigong,’ which means ‘qi work’ or, loosely, ‘energy work.’ It looks like the end view of an I-beam to me, and I find it easy to associate that with work and labor...and perhaps even with fear, since I’d be afraid to find myself standing high in a building under construction on an I-beam.

凡,

in the upper right, means ‘mediocre, common, ordinary,’ and what could be more terrifying than being trapped at work, 工, with mediocre colleagues?

0084 指

指

This character means ‘finger (also ‘toe’ in Chinese), point to.’ It’s pronounced yubi (finger) and sasu in Japanese; zhǐ in Chinese.

The figure on the left is a simplified version of the character for ‘hand’:

手.

The right-hand portion

旨

means ‘purpose, meaning, excellent, skillful,’ but it’s there just as a sound clue. Originally it signified a person

匕

who speaks

曰 ,

meaning ‘an imperial decree,’ and looked more like this:

 .

(Please ignore the fact that 匕 now means ‘spoon,’ rather than ‘man,’ and that 日 means ‘day, sun.’)

Perhaps we can think of the purpose of the hands being excellently and skillfully implemented by the fingers, our target word.

0083 覚

覚

This character means ‘to remember, learn, feel,’ (in Japanese; pronounced KAKU and oboeru) and also ‘to wake up’ (in Japanese, sameru, and Chinese, jué). There is virtually no information about its history in my usual sources.

The lower figure,

見,

means ‘to see, observe, perceive,’ which gets us most of the way, semantically, to ‘remember, wake up, etc.’

The upper part has no clear independent meaning, but we can take it for the thinking cap of someone who is learning or for the tousled hair of one who has just woken up.

0082 体

体

This character means ‘body, group, object, reality.’ In Japanese it’s pronounced TAI or karada, and in Chinese it’s tǐ.

亻

is just a compressed way to write

人,

a man on two legs, meaning ‘man, people.’

本

means ‘root, origin’ in Chinese, but in Japanese it means ‘origin, real, true,’ but also ‘book.’ In today’s character it gives a sound clue, which is no help to us in remembering the character’s meaning. We could, however, think of a person’s ‘reality’ as their body. Or, if we saw ‘person’ and ‘book’ in the character, we could think, rather poetically, that the person’s ‘book’ is the person’s body, as in, ‘You could read her like a book.’

0081 看

看

This character is a great picture. A hand,

手,

over an eye, shading it,

目,

means ‘to watch, to see, to examine.’

It’s pronounced KAN and miru in Japanese, and it’s kàn in Chinese.

The archaic characters are very close to the modern one:

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The eye in that second character above is very attentive, don’t you think?

0080 葉

葉

This character means ‘leaf.’ It’s pronounced YŌ and ha or happa in Japanese, and yè in Chinese.

The upper part,

艹,

stands for ‘grass,’

and the lower part,

木,

is the familiar character for ‘tree.’

The bit in the middle,

世,

means ‘generation, world, society, era, life.’ It and the tree are actually just there as a sound hint, but one can put all the parts together—grass, tree, and life—and maybe that will remind one of ‘leaf.’

However, another way to deal with this character is by looking at the archaic versions:

  .

It sure looks like those are trees...with leaves. And the bit that now means ‘generation, world, etc.,’ in the middle, just looks like the branches of the trees. And the ‘grass’ on top also just looks like leaves. Sometimes it seems like scribes over the centuries tended to regularize these older pictures by drawing them as if they were made of pieces which (today?) have other meanings. Or maybe those branches ‘generate’ the leaves.