雅虎 (Yǎ hǔ) — Yahoo (internet company)

Definition

noun

Yahoo (internet company)

雅虎，。
Wǒ yǐ qián yòng Yǎ hǔ yóu xiāng, xiàn zài bú yòng le.
I used to use Yahoo email, but I don't anymore.
雅虎。
Yǎ hǔ Céng shì quán qiú zuì dà de hù lián wǎng gōng sī zhī yī.
Yahoo was once one of the largest internet companies in the world.
雅虎？
Nǐ zhī dào Yǎ hǔ de chuàng shǐ rén shì shuí ma?
Do you know who the founder of Yahoo is?

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.

雅虎 spells the foreign name Yahoo; the characters 雅 and 虎 carry no meaning of their own here.

Sound-only characters

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

隹牙雅

Meaning part形符xíngfú

隹隹zhuīa short-tailed bird

Sound part声符shēngfú

牙

Same sound today

雅 pairs 隹, a short-tailed bird, with 牙 as its sound part; the bird was a rook/crow, and the sense was extended to refined.

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

虎 originally drew a tiger's head. Its body disappeared, and the legs and tail became the lower part.