大马士革 (Dà mǎ shì gé) — Damascus

Definition

noun
Damascus

Examples

  • 大马士革
    Wǒ míng nián xiǎng qù Dà mǎ shì gé lǚ yóu.
    I want to travel to Damascus next year.
  • 大马士革
    Dà mǎ shì gé Shì yí zuò lì shǐ yōu jiǔ de chéng shì.
    Damascus is a city with a long history.
  • 大马士革
    Tā zhèng zài xué xí Dà mǎ shì gé de lì shǐ.
    He is studying the history of Damascus.

Origin

Single-morpheme word
构词法gòucífǎ
音译yīnyìTransliteration

The characters spell the sound of a foreign word; their individual meanings play no part.

The characters 大马士革 only spell the foreign name Damascus; individually they do not contribute meaning.

Sound-only characters

A drawing of the thing itself, worn down over three thousand years into a few strokes.

The form 大 is a picture of a person standing and facing forward, not of someone stretching their arms.

Open 大 →

A drawing of the thing itself, worn down over three thousand years into a few strokes.

This origin belongs to the traditional form 馬; 马 is its simplified writing.

The traditional form 馬 shows a horse with its head facing left, a flowing mane, and two legs standing vertically.

Open 马 →

A drawing of the thing itself, worn down over three thousand years into a few strokes.

The shape 士 comes from a simple drawing of a war axe. The character later came to mean a soldier, officer, or intellectual.

Open 士 →

A drawing of the thing itself, worn down over three thousand years into a few strokes.

革 is drawn as a stretched animal hide, with the upper part as the head and the lower part as the tail and legs.

Open 革 →
Appears in

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