In Mandarin Chinese, 太 (Pinyin: tài 🔊) is used either as an adverb “so”, “too”, “very”, or an adjective meaning “greatest”, “highest”, “noble”, “senior”, “utmost” etc. 太 is extremely common: “is one of the 1000 most commonly used words” in the Collins Chinese Dictionary. There are many compound words starting with 太, such as 太平 (tàipíng) “peace and tranquility”, 太空 (tàikōng) “space”, 太太 (tàitai) “wife”, or 太爷爷 / 太爺爺 (tàiyéye) “great-grandfather”.
By now we’ve got used to the figurative meanings of Chinese numerals (e.g. 万 means “ten thousand” but also “all”, “countless” and so on). Well, in case of 太 the opposite seems to be true as well: in Mainland China, 太 is employed as prefix “tera-” (1012), as in 太字节 / 太字節 (tàizìjié) “terabyte”.
Just like now-familiar 犬 “dog”, 太 consists of 大, “big”, modified with a stroke 丶; however in the case of 太 the stroke moved from the presumed “ear” position to somewhere, er, between the “legs”.
More photos of sea glass @ Shutterstock.
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