HOW ARE CHINESE WORDS CREATED?
This dictionary deals with Chinese etymology of Chinese characters. Most Chinese characters are words by themselves with few exceptions, e.g. the characters in butterfly only have independent meaning as allusions to the two-character word. While most characters are words, most Chinese words are not just a single character, but rather are composed of at least two characters. Chinese has many hundreds of thousands of words, most of which are created by combining just a few thousand characters. The etymology of these words is usually straight forward, e.g. “pirate” or “sea thief.” Note that the word for “crisis” is often described as combining “danger” and “opportunity.” Actually this word was imported from Japanese where it was created just the way Chinese words are created, but its real etymology is closer to “dangerous time.” Multiple character words are created by several methods. As in two characters might each contribute meaning, which in combination indicates the word’s meaning. Wh
