“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.

[watersword]

I love this.