Comment by matvore
12 hours ago
A component can contribute meaning as well as pronunciation. 沌 is pronounced like 屯 and they both have a kind of "gather" "clog" meaning
12 hours ago
A component can contribute meaning as well as pronunciation. 沌 is pronounced like 屯 and they both have a kind of "gather" "clog" meaning
That is not a method of character construction. It could happen, but you would never expect it.
Also... there is no "gather" or "clog" sense of 沌? There's a "gather" sense of 屯...
According to https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%B2%8C-2789579#goog_rewarded 沌 has a meaning "gather, water gathers"
There are other meanings to it.
I admit I had a hard time finding an example.
> I admit I had a hard time finding an example.
Where did you get the original 'example' of 沌 / 屯 from? Most people prefer to use examples that they have some kind of personal knowledge of.
> There are other meanings to it. [沌]
Not as many as you might expect. It's (part of) a mythological term referring to the state of the universe before it took the form we can observe today. It has a couple of other metaphorical meanings coming from that, or from traditional sayings related to that.
I see that wiktionary lists 沌がる as an alternate spelling of 塞がる "be blocked" [塞 - obstruct / block / plug], which looks like the closest thing we're likely to find to your earlier claim. Obvious problems using this to support your comment are:
- There's still no "gathering" or "accumulating" sense. (Nor is there an "obstruct" sense of 屯.)
- This is a meaning assigned long after the character came into existence, which means it cannot have informed the construction of the character.
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