In Mandarin Chinese, 荞 (Pinyin: qiáo 🔊) is a word for buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum). According to Wikipedia, the world production of this important crop is led by Russia (49% of the world total) and China (28%).
荞 is a simplified form of the traditional character 蕎, which is a phono-semantic compound of phonetic 喬 (qiáo) and our old friend 艹 “grass”. The simplified version of 喬 is 乔.
More photos related to buckwheat, grains and noodles @ Shutterstock.
In Mandarin Chinese, 苗 (Pinyin: miáo 🔊) is a noun that means “seedling”, “sprout”, “young” (of an animal), “descendant”, “offspring” and so on. Some compound words of 苗 include
According to Wiktionary, 苗 is an ideogrammic compound of 艹 “grass” and 田 “field”. But what it has to do with 猫, “cat”? The origin of the word 猫 (māo) is purely onomatopoetic: the cat is an animal that meows 🔊. Likewise, the word for this very sound, 喵 (miāo), “meow”, is a phono-semantic compound of semantic 口 “mouth” and phonetic 苗.
More photos related to sprouts, shoots, seedlings and sea glass @ Shutterstock.
In Mandarin Chinese, 草 (Pinyin: cǎo 🔊) is a noun that means “grass”, “straw”, “thatch”, “herb”; by extension, any green plant without bark (or, to use Baldrick’s method of defining things, “not a tree”); “draft”, “sketch” (the scribble that looks like grass?). It also has acquired an euphemistic meaning of the similarly-pronounced vulgar word 肏 (cào).
According to Wiktionary, 草 is a
Phono-semantic compound: semantic 艸 (“grass; plant”) + phonetic 早. Originally referred to 皂, and later borrowed for the “grass” sense, replacing 艸.
艹 is a radical form of 艸. We’ve seen it before in such characters as 茶 “tea” and 花 “flower”.
More photos related to grass, herbs, straw and sea glass @ Shutterstock.
In Mandarin Chinese, the literal meaning of 花 (Pinyin: huā 🔊) is “flower”. This word has many figurative meanings, such as “pattern” (floral or otherwise), “pinnacle”, “fireworks”, “a beauty” or “a lady of the night”. 花 forms many compounds, such as 茶花 (cháhuā) “camellia”, 火花 (huǒhuā) “spark” and 水花 (shuǐhuā) “spray”.
The top part of this character, 艹, means “grass”. We’ve seen this radical before as a part of 茶 (chá), “tea”. The bottom part, 化 (huà), in its turn, consists of two 人, i.e. “people”: one upright (亻) and another upside down, together symbolising “change” or “reversal”. According to Ponte Ryūrui,
The bottom part of 花 (化, か, i.e. “action of making something”, “change”) acts purely phonetically, although certain etymology theories suggest to take 化 as “a change” of the state of a plant (blossoming).
More photos related to flowers, fireworks, hanzi and calligraphy @ Shutterstock.
In Mandarin Chinese, 茶 (Pinyin: chá 🔊) means “tea”.
Turkish çay and Russian чай are the variations on the theme of chá. In Min Nan, the same word is pronounced as tê; thanks to the Dutch East India Company, this plant and drink is known in Europe as tea.
According to Wiktionary, 茶 is a graphical modification of archaic 荼 (tú):
荼 can refer to one of several types of bitter tasting vegetables. Early Chinese texts are rather vague in their description. This makes it difficult to determine which species it originally referred to.
Whatever is real origin of the character, I prefer thinking of it as a slightly scrambled doodle of a traditional Chinese tea house.
