# 夬



## bluton

How is 夬 pronounced and what does it mean? I used Wiktionary and it said that it means "resolute" while another website gave "decisive". However, none of the dictionaries I have such as Collins and Merriam-Webster list this word. Also, different websites give different pronunciations: one says guài while another says jué.


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## hx1997

Per 《现代汉语词典》, the standard pronunciation in mainland is guài. And it's something related to ancient Chinese philosophy (《易经》中的一卦) and rarely used today.


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## SuperXW

Where did you see it?


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## bluton

It was in my book for learning Chinese. I guess since it's hardly used anymore I shouldn't care whether it means "decisive" or "resolute" or something else.


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## SuperXW

It would be very strange if a Chinese learning book introduces this character. 
Are you sure you didn't mistaken 决 as 夬? 
决 (jue2) is common and usually means "decisive" or "resolute", not 夬.


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## bluton

It does seem strange, but my book did indeed introduce it. It's called "Chinese Characters" by Alan Hoenig.


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## bluton

hx1997 said:


> Per 《现代汉语词典》, the standard pronunciation in mainland is guài. And it's something related to ancient Chinese philosophy (《易经》中的一卦) and rarely used today.



I don't know Chinese well enough to read what you wrote. Could you please translate 《易经》中的一卦 for me?


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## SuperXW

At least in modern Chinese, the character should be 决 (decisive, resolute etc.), not 夬.
夬 would be an ancient character that few people recognizes today. 《易经》中的一卦 cannot be translated directly as it refers to terms in a complicate ancient divination system. You can check here if you are interested. 
Why don't you show the context of your book? I'm sure native speaker can easily tell which character it is if they see the context.


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## bluton

Actually, I just noticed that my textbook says that it's a component. The meaning it gives is "surprised man". And it doesn't give a pronunciation!


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## wanipa

Right, it is a component or say a radical, but it's a character as well. Still I'm a bit curious how you managed to input it in the forum. ;-)


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## brofeelgood

I googled the book you mentioned and flipped through it. It's one of the most overreaching theories I've ever read that tries to correlate the shapes of Chinese characters and their meanings. I get that many Chinese characters have logographic origins, and it's still possible to decipher some of them by studying the individual parts, but a lot of it has been lost through millennia of evolution and the transition from traditional to simplified form. So in my opinion, this author has done something absolutely staggering here. In his book, he defines 夬 as a component ("_That little vertical tweak is an unexpected mark—something the man _(人)_ had no idea was awaiting him. We’ll use this component for a surprised man._"). This is half correct. The radical of the word is indeed 人 (a man), but it really takes some imagination to envisage the rest of it.

Here are a couple of words in the book that contain this component:

1) 缺 - be short of, lack. (based on the following rationale)
"_Because of the dry mountainous bits _(缶)_ to which the prisoners (a bunch of men surprised at this harsh sentence) have been exiled, there’s a serious shortage of food. Everyone is slowly starving._"

2) 决 - decide. (based on the following rationale)
"_The man was surprised by the amount of winter ice _(冫)_ in New York City. This is not for him—he has decided to move to a warmer climate, and he’ll be on the next plane to California._"

Somehow, (1) dry mountainous bits + surprised man = lack and (2) ice + surprised man = decide. 

I can't fathom the technique. And I actually had to read the preface and introduction twice to make sure the author's intention wasn't to write something humorous.


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## Skatinginbc

Good pionts, Bro.

I believe 夬 is a 象形字 (說文：象決形).  The 又 in 夬 (as in 小篆 or its ancient form 叏) represents a hand (象右手形; 从“又”的字多与手的动作有关).  It holds a "丨" or an upward spear (徐鍇曰：丨, 所以決之) piercing through the center of "コ" or an object (徐鍇曰：コ, 物也). The character therefore means "to break/cut something apart ( 《說文》分決也)".

缺 = 缶 (earthenware) + 夬 (broken apart) = 器破也

決 = 水 (river) + 夬 (broken apart) = distributary 分流也


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## bluton

Thank you


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