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赫尔 (Hè ěr) — Hull (city in England; also Kingston upon Hull)

Definition

noun
Hull (city in England; also Kingston upon Hull)

Examples

  • 赫尔。
    Wǒ qù nián xià tiān qù le Hè ěr lǚ yóu.
    I went to Hull for a trip last summer.
  • 赫尔。
    Hè ěr Shì yīng guó de yí gè gǎng kǒu chéng shì.
    Hull is a port city in England.
  • 赫尔，。
    Tā chū shēng zài Hè ěr, hòu lái bān dào le lún dūn.
    He was born in Hull and later moved to London.

Origin

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.

赫hè
尔ěr

The characters 赫尔 have no meaning of their own here; together they spell Hull.

Sound-only characters

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

赫 is made from two copies of the same part, and that part also gives its sound.

Open 赫 →

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

假借jiǎjièLater borrowed for its sound alone — the picture has nothing to do with today’s meaning.

This origin belongs to the traditional form 爾; 尔 is its simplified writing.

The traditional form 爾, simplified as 尔, originally drew cloth on a loom with crossing threads. It was borrowed for its sound to write “you,” so the picture is unrelated to that meaning.

Open 尔 →
Appears in
City & Urban

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