“It’s something when a unicorn thinks the butterfly names are too poetic.”

[larryhammer]

Chinese has a lot of suspiciously specific characters, most of them obscure, though in many cases the suspicion is because they’re the name of an object that’s no longer used, such as 铃, pronounced líng, which is a sort of bell used only for decorating an imperial carriage. And then there’s ones like my favorite: 虯, pronounced qiú, meaning a young dragon old enough to have grown horns.

There are characters that are more suspiciously specific, but this one, I keep circling back, inventing contexts that would require having a word for the concept. I mean, I can see farmers inventing shoat/shote so they can talk specifically about weaned pigs that are less than a year old, and getting them ready for market, but dragons aren’t farmed or hunted, or even fished.

虯 —that’s—huh. Yeah.

---L.

Subject quote from Safely You Deliver, Graydon Saunders.

Comments

[movingfinger]

That really is fascinating!

Have you started calling Eaglet 虯 yet?

[larryhammer]

No, and I'm not going to dare it atm

[sartorias]

I absolitely love this stuff.

[larryhammer]

Indeed!

[watersword]

I love this.

[larryhammer]

ikr?

[moon_custafer]

Somebody needed technical terms for dragon research/husbandry-shop-talk

[larryhammer]

But who?

[falkner]

> but dragons aren’t farmed or hunted, or even fished

Are we 100% sure about that?

[larryhammer]

If they were, we'd have like a handful of competing books all called "The Classic of Rearing Dragons"

[sovay]

And then there’s ones like my favorite: 虯, pronounced qiú, meaning a young dragon old enough to have grown horns.

You might need to describe it accurately if you met one!

[larryhammer]

True, if.

[shewhomust]

I can't help hearing this to the tune of the Shagri-Las' Give Him a Great Big Kiss: "Is he quite young? / Old enough to have grown horns..."

[larryhammer]

There's something a little ... off ... with that lyric. Can't quite put my finger on what.

[mme_n_b]

Someone was writing...stories... about barely-legal dragons.

[larryhammer]

There are so, so many things wrong with that.

[mme_n_b]

But it is the obvious explanation. Of course, ancient China did not (I think?) have age-based consent laws, but Dragons are Wise.
Therefore the dragons would have a minimum consent age, probably tied not to a number (because they are Wise), but to mental and physical maturity shown by horn growth.
I'm going to assume that dragon youths are somewhat less Wise than fully-adult dragons, and are drawn to experimentation and wild sex-seeking shenanigans, possibly even with humans. This hypothesis is (lightly) supported by the folk memories of dragons expressed both in epic poetry and modern literature.

Unfortunately, I am not sufficiently familiar with Chinese epic poetry and modern literature, but I am familiar with Russian ones and dragons seem to only come to Russia for two things. I doubt they acted very differently in China. https://litnet.com/ru/tag/%D0%B4%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BD-t292

This, of course, would make the character absolutely necessary in a number of ways - literature, news-sharing, parental warnings...

Incidentally, in what context does it actually occur?

[larryhammer]

China did have consent laws loosely related to age: once one was of age i.e. an adult, one was recognized as able to give consent. Traditionally this was around 15 for women and 20 for men (there was flexibility as to when the family performed the ceremony), though of course among the upper classes older teen boys were expected to play around.

I've seen the word in poetry, generally as part of an ornamental description. Exactly why the poem selected a dragon that age, aside the word from fitting the meter and/or rhyme scheme, has never been clear to me. The clearest example I can think of, no sexual connotation would make sense.