As a living fossil of ancient Chinese, the Hokkien language retains the ancient sound and meaning relatively completely, and there are some words that we usually can't see, and we hardly use it, but it is the daily language of the Hokkien population. Due to their age, the use rate of these words is not high, and most of their pronunciation has been passed down by word of mouth. Therefore, if you want to trace the origin of the earliest characters from their pronunciation, it is inevitable that there will be many difficulties.
Fortunately, there are many scholars who have worked tirelessly to study and sort out these ancient scripts, which are difficult to find in writing, to enter the modern world's field of vision, although some of the results are debatable or controversial.
Today I will share a word - "䞤" ("sentence" is changed to "勼"), which is pronounced qíu in Mandarin and kíu in Hokkien. Since the mobile phone can't be called, the following is replaced by "勼").
"Ji Yun • You Yun" is called "勼" and says:
"I don't stretch my feet. Or as a slur. ”
趜 here is also pronounced qiú. It also means "the body does not stretch".
(Tang Xuanying's "All the Scriptures and Yinyi" volume 13 quotes "Popular Texts":
"The body is not a statement."
The pronunciation here is jú. That is to say, the original meaning of "勼" is that you can't stretch your feet.
Is it rare to see "勼" or "趜"? Or that you haven't seen it.
However, it is often used in the daily spoken language of Hokkien. There are two main meanings:
One is its original meaning, that is, the foot is not stretched.
Like what:
"勼筋"或"勼骹筋"(kíu as goon脚抽筋),"勼归球"(kíu guī gíu 蜷缩成一团)。
The second is its extended meaning, which many people can't think of - frugality.
Like what:
"汝真勼!"(lī boyn kíu你真节俭)
"He is personally very frugal!" (hì gē láng yā kíu kiām That person is very frugal)
Thrift is slightly different in different contexts, most of which means that people are thrifty, and a small part is that people are stingy.
Of course, it can also be further extended, such as:
"日子过卡丫勼!" (lī zī guē kà/kíu 日子过得很拮据。 ）
The extended meaning highlights the charm of Hokkien
Isn't it interesting to extend from the original meaning of shrinking hands and feet to thrift!
You may think that using money to shrink your hands and feet is of course thrifty, but don't forget, it's just one word! The original meaning is not combined with money, this is the charm?! As the author shared in another article, the Hokkien people's "hungry ghosts" (i.e., hungry ghosts) not only describe people are very hungry, but also describe people who are stingy, because miserly people are easy to become hungry ghosts after death.
By the way, as mentioned at the beginning, there are many difficulties in tracing the origin of ancient characters from the sound of circulation, and the text is also constantly evolving. It is also said that the Hokkien word for qíu is 虬, which is both the legendary horned dragon and also means "curled", such as "虬毛" (kíu méng hair is curly). Of course, there are some other characters that read qíu, which is right and which is not, it is difficult to distinguish, after all, there are too many homophone Chinese characters.
Do you have a similar expression over there? Welcome to discuss in the comment area!