登革热 (dēng gé rè) — dengue fever | tongtong Chinese Dictionary

Definition

noun

dengue fever

登革热。
dēng gé rè Shì yì zhǒng yóu wén zi chuán bō de jí bìng.
Dengue fever is a disease spread by mosquitoes.
登革热，。
Dé le dēng gé rè huì fā shāo, tóu hěn tòng.
Getting dengue fever causes a fever and a bad headache.
登革热。
Yù fáng dēng gé rè zuì zhòng yào de shì fáng wén zi.
The most important thing to prevent dengue fever is to guard against mosquitoes.

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.

登革dengue

音译Transliteration

登革 spells the foreign name dengue, and 热 marks it as a fever.

Characters in this word

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

癶豆登

登 pairs 癶, left and right feet, with 豆, a raised object or stepping stone; its older form also showed two hands at the bottom, which later dropped.

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.

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

This origin belongs to the traditional form 熱; 热 is its simplified writing.

埶灬熱

Meaning part形符xíngfú

灬Written in full as火huǒfire

Sound part声符shēngfú

埶

埶yì熱rè

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

The traditional form 熱 pairs 埶 with 火 (written as 灬) to show heat, while 埶 gives a sound.