In Mandarin Chinese, 春 (Pinyin: chūn 🔊) is a noun that means “spring season” as well as “vitality”, “energy”, “life”, “lust”, “passion”, “sexual desire” — many things that are associated with springtime. Some interesting compound words of 春 include
- 春 + 节 = 春节 (chūnjié): “Spring Festival” (Chinese New Year)
- 小 + 春 = 小春 (xiǎochūn): literally, “little spring” but in fact early autumn, Indian summer
- 春 + 风 = 春风 (chūnfēng): literally, “spring breeze” but also figuratively “favour”, “grace”, “education”, “teaching”, “guidance” and, you may have guessed, “lovemaking”
春 is a phono-semantic compound of semantic 日 “sun”, semantic 艸 “grass” and phonetic 屯 (tún). In some historical forms of this character one can clearly see all three components. According to Wiktionary,
The character 春 itself is probably a variant of 屯 as they are equivalent for the meaning “spring” in Old Chinese literature.
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