希腊 (Xī là) — Greece | TongTong Chinese Dictionary

Definition

noun

Greece

希腊。
Qù nián xià tiān wǒ qù Xī là lǚ yóu le.
I traveled to Greece last summer.
希腊。
Xī là Shì xī fāng wén míng de fā yuán dì zhī yī.
Greece is one of the cradles of Western civilization.
希腊。
Tā zhèng zài dú yì běn guān yú Xī là shén huà de shū.
She is reading a book about Greek mythology.

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 希 and 腊 here only spell the foreign name for Greece; neither carries its own meaning.

Sound-only characters

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

希 is made from 爻 and 巾, which means cloth. How those parts connect to “hope” is not explained.

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

Sound part声符shēngfú

昔

The sound has drifted apartThe sound part was a clue two thousand years ago — it often still helps, but not always.

腊 pairs 肉, meaning meat, with 昔, which gives the sound.

Appears in