Wednesday 21 February 2018

苗 | miáo

In Mandarin Chinese, (Pinyin: miáo 🔊) is a noun that means “seedling”, “sprout”, “young” (of an animal), “descendant”, “offspring” and so on. Some compound words of include

  • + = 苗木 (miáomù): young tree, sapling
  • + = 苗子 (miáozi): a talented child, “budding”, “in the making”
  • + = 火苗 (huǒmiáo): tongue of flame

According to Wiktionary, is an ideogrammic compound of “grass” and “field”. But what it has to do with , “cat”? The origin of the word (māo) is purely onomatopoetic: the cat is an animal that meows 🔊. Likewise, the word for this very sound, (miāo), “meow”, is a phono-semantic compound of semantic “mouth” and phonetic .

More photos related to sprouts, shoots, seedlings and sea glass @ Shutterstock.

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