Wednesday, August 16, 2023

FLICKERING AT THE EDGE OF THE PAGE

Years ago I happily went through various language dictionaries at night, trying to fall asleep. Which, I discovered, didn't work. I started noticing patterns, and would then leaf back several hundred pages to confirm my surmise. Yes! Indeed it IS related to that! They clearly have the same root! The excitement, palpable, would keep me awake till four or five in the morning.

So as a technique for restful slumber it was a complete failure.
I would dream in words with nothing holding them together.
Which is better than dreaming in excel.
Also did that.


Often I still like word-hunting. Which in Chinese dictionaries is quite rewarding, and yields stuff that sometimes is of no earthly use whatsoever. Such as the word 𥎐 which occurs in less than half a dozen texts, and isn't defined in any of the dictionaries I normally consult. It's mentioned, with quotes for context, from which we might construct a possible meaning.
The word did not survive long enough to settle in.
𥎐

Despite my seal-script construction, which is zeer verantwoord, there is no seal-script or Jinwen version of the beast on the internet. It existed long enough for someone to invent a character -- presumably enough readers understood it, especially in context, in texts to which they were fortunately privy -- but possibly less than one or two generations later was no longer au courant. Not quite the hip with it literate vocabulary item.

Now that I 'know' it, what the heck do I do with it?



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