乍得 (zhà dé) — Chad (country in Central Africa)

Definition

noun

Chad (country in Central Africa)

乍得？
Nǐ tīng shuō guò zhà dé zhè ge guó jiā ma?
Have you heard of the country of Chad?
乍得。
zhà dé Wèi yú fēi zhōu de zhōng bù.
Chad is located in central Africa.
乍得。
Wǒ men zài dì tú shàng zhǎo dào le zhà dé.
We found Chad on the map.

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.

乍得 spells the foreign name Chad; the characters 乍 and 得 carry no meaning of their own here.

Sound-only characters

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

乍 was drawn as an axe chopping wood.

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

The old form 㝵 showed a hand picking up a cowry, meaning to obtain; later changes turned that picture into 得.