吉达 (Jí dá) — Jeddah (a city in Saudi Arabia on the Red Sea)

Definition

noun

Jeddah (a city in Saudi Arabia on the Red Sea)

吉达。
Wǒ xià ge yuè yào qù Jí dá chū chāi.
I'm going to Jeddah on a business trip next month.
吉达。
Jí dá Shì shā tè ā lā bó de zhòng yào gǎng kǒu chéng shì.
Jeddah is an important port city in Saudi Arabia.
吉达。
Cóng Jí dá zuò fēi jī dào mài jiā hěn jìn.
It's a short flight from Jeddah to Mecca.

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.

吉 and 达 only spell the foreign place name Jeddah; they carry no meaning of their own here.

Sound-only characters

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

In the earliest forms, 吉 was drawn with a mouth-like lower part and an upper part that later became today's upper shape.

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

辶大达

Meaning part形符xíngfú

辶Written in full as辵chuò

Sound part声符shēngfú

大

Same sound today

This form 达 pairs 辶 (written in full as 辵) with 大 as a sound component.