油公司 (yóu gōng sī) — oil company

Definition

noun
oil company
Measure word · 家

Examples

  • 油公司。
    Zhè jiā yóu gōng sī shì guó yǒu dà xíng qǐ yè.
    This oil company is a large state-owned enterprise.
  • 油公司。
    Tā zài yì jiā kuà guó yóu gōng sī zuò gōng chéng shī.
    He works as an engineer at a multinational oil company.
  • 油公司。
    Xīn fā xiàn de yóu tián ràng dāng dì yóu gōng sī gǔ jià dà zhǎng.
    The newly discovered oil field caused the local oil company's stock price to surge.

Origin

Compound word
构词法gòucífǎ
偏正piānzhèngModifier + head

The first part narrows down the second: it says what kind of thing the head is.

油yóuoil
公司company
公gōngpublic司sīdepartment
偏正Modifier + head

油 names oil and 公司 names the business, so it means a company dealing in oil.

Characters in this word

Most characters — around four in five — are built this way: one part hints at the meaning, the other at the pronunciation.

Meaning part形符xíngfú
氵Written in full as水shuǐwater
Sound part声符shēngfú
由
由yóu油yóu
Same sound today

油 is built from 氵, a water part, and 由, which supplies the sound.

Open 油 →

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

One theory sees 公 as a picture of a wide-mouthed, round-bottomed jar.

Open 公 →

Two or more meaningful parts placed together so that their meanings combine into a new one.

The evidence is inconclusive: one suggestion sees 司 as a mouth giving orders beside a mark of authority, another reads that mark as a hand, and another sees it as a reversed older form.

Open 司 →

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