秀

Meanings

Etymology

From an earlier form 𥝙, attested in the stone drum inscriptions (石鼓文 (shígǔwén)) from the Warring States period. According to Chi (2010), the character is an ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 禾 (“rice plant”) + 引 (“to draw out flowers”) — blooming of a rice plant. The Shuihudi Qin bamboo texts (睡簡) recorded this character as ⿱禾引. The bottom component 弓 found in the stone drum inscriptions is likely a reduction of 引. Xu Kai (徐鍇), the author of 《說文解字繫傳》 (10th century AD) gave the following explanation: Pictogram (象形): 禾 (“plant”) + 乃, resembling a fruit/an ear hanging off a plant. Shuowen states that this character was tabooed at that time (2nd century AD) and so did not elaborate on its origin, due to it being the birth name of Emperor Guangwu of Han. Schuessler (2007) implicitly connects Proto-Tibeto-Burman *h(r)u (“to blow, breathe; life”), via comparison with Chepang स्यु (syu-, “to prosper, flourish”). If so, compare Burmese ရှူ (hru, “to breathe, inhale”). Alternatively, perhaps a causative of 褎 (OC *lɯws, “growth of seedlings”). Compare Proto-Vietic *m-loh (“to blossom”) (whence Vietnamese trổ (“to burst, to open, to display”), lổ (“naked”)), and Khmer លាស់ (lŏəh, “to grow, to blossom, to prosper”). Schuessler prefers the Sino-Tibetan theory above to this theory, however.

Wiktionary · CC BY-SA

Stroke order

Components

Components from cjk-decomp · MIT

Example sentences

• 我愛看脫口秀。

  I love watching talk shows.

• 她丈夫是個優秀的廚師。

  Her husband is an excellent cook.

• 我知道湯姆是優秀的排球手。

  I know Tom is a good volleyball player.

• 他是一個優秀的腦外科醫生。

  He's an excellent brain surgeon.

• 她的父親是一位優秀的鋼琴家。

  Her father is an excellent pianist.

• 这场秀棒极了，但是门票太贵了。

  The show was wonderful, but the tickets were too expensive.

Sentences from Tatoeba · CC-BY 2.0 FR

More examples & usage (AI)

Synonyms

Wiktionary · CC BY-SA

Derived terms

Wiktionary · CC BY-SA

Related words