In the inheritance and application of more than 5,000 years, Chinese characters have formed many advantages, mainly in three aspects.
First, the combination of Chinese characters is intrinsically related and indicative. Through the investigation and analysis of glyphs, most Chinese characters can roughly guess the meaning even if they don't understand the pronunciation.
Secondly, Chinese characters are monosyllabic, with high recognition, and can be combined into many words with rich meanings, which is very convenient to use.
Thirdly, the beautiful structure of Chinese characters breeds the art of calligraphy.
Chinese characters can be divided into "single words" and "synthetic words" according to the combination. The mother's "mother" and the vicious "poison" mentioned in this paper are just single words, while the latter belongs to synthetic words.
The things related to the word "mother" are huge, such as mother, loving mother, maternal love and so on. However, after the word "mother" is combined into the word "poison", its meaning has changed greatly, which makes people wonder: why is there the word "mother" in the word "poison"? What is the connection between the two?
To answer this question, we must trace back to the source and start from the source of these two words.
The word "mother" was born earlier and first appeared in Oracle Bone Inscriptions. It is related to women in matriarchal society, and its narrow and broad meanings are different.
"Mother" in a narrow sense is a noun, especially a mother. Broadly speaking, the younger generation of women who are related to their mothers can be called mothers, for example, grandmothers, aunts, aunts and so on. Erya Qin said: Mother's sister is a slave mother.
The word "mother" in Oracle Bone Inscriptions is a typical hieroglyphic, with the appearance of a woman kneeling with her hands holding her chest. There are two points on the top of the word for breasts. So the extended meaning of this word is fertility, breastfeeding and nursing.
Later, as the meaning of the word "mother" expanded from time to time, it brought some other extended meanings, mainly two.
First, all female animals with reproductive function can be represented by "mother", such as mares, cows and hens.
Second, the word "mother" is often given a strong emotional color in order to love and be grateful for some emotional things. For example, the Yellow River is called "Mother River", the language of our nation is called "mother tongue", and the school where we studied and lived is called "Alma Mater".
In the modern context, the meaning of the word "mother" is getting richer and richer. In addition to the above meaning, it has evolved into two meanings. One refers to things that can give birth to new things, such as yeast, yeast, mother method, letters and so on. Second, it refers to two large pieces of things that can be matched with each other, such as nuts, buttons and so on.
The word "poison" first appeared in Shuo Wen Jie Zi, which belongs to the knowing word. When it was presented before, it was Xiao Zhuan. It can be seen from this that the word "poison" was born much later than the word "mother".
It stands to reason that the word-making method of Chinese characters follows a strong correlation, and it is very strict when choosing the root to invent new words, and will not invent some words that are not logically related to the root.
The word "poison" only takes the word "mother" as its root, which makes people take it for granted that there must be a connection between these two words.
Moreover, there is a saying called "the most poisonous woman's heart", which further strengthens the credibility of this concept.
In practice, the two words "mother" and "poison" are not directly related. We can fully understand them by analyzing the origin, meaning and usage of the word "poison".
The word "poison" in Shuo Wen Jie Zi is a seal script whose upper part is similar to the word "mountain" and the lower part is the word "Wu". Why is this combination? Shuo Wen Jie Zi only explains: poison is thick. Those who do harm are always born.
After textual research and analysis of the word "poison", some philologists believe that the original meaning of the word "poison" refers to the common substances that threaten people's lives in mountainous areas, which may be some grass or some insects. The word "no" at the bottom is to remind everyone not to touch it casually.
The wise ancients not only invented the word "poison", but also implied that it threatened life and reminded people not to touch it. The connotation of this word is really rich, which perfectly expresses the profoundness of Chinese characters.
After the word "poison" was invented, it was used as a noun to refer to poisonous weeds or insects for a long time. Later, many new meanings were derived, and the connotation became richer and richer.
In many ancient books and the handwriting of ancient calligraphers, we can see that the writing of the word "mother" is completely different from the writing of the word "Wu". The writing of the word "poison" constantly follows the structure of the chapter in Shuowen Jiezi, with the word "main" above and the word "martial" below.
There is no difference between the word "mother" written by Zhong You, a great calligrapher in the Three Kingdoms period, and the word "poison" written by a great calligrapher in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. The upper part is similar to "master" and the lower part is similar to "martial arts".
The word "poison" has nothing to do with the word "mother" in terms of word formation and ancient writing.
So, why did it later become the writing of "God and Mother"?
This is a coincidence caused by the simplification of Chinese characters from time to time.
As we all know, Chinese characters have undergone the evolution of Oracle Bone Inscriptions, Jinwen, Shi Guwen, Xiaozhuan, Lishu, running script, cursive script and regular script. The result of evolution is nothing more than making strokes simpler, writing simpler, structure more stable and recognition easier.
In this simplification process, the word "Wu" under the word "poison" was gradually replaced by the word "mother", and the writing was fixed. When modern people see the word "poison", it is difficult to associate it with so many connotations.