Additional information about 軀
說文解字: 【軀】，體也。从身、區聲。 【豈俱切】
- Criteria
- BANISH
[BASIC/MARGINAL]
[CURRENT/RARE]
[DRAMATIC/UNDRAMATIC]
[GENERAL/SPECIFIC]
[LASTING/TEMPORARY]
1. The main general word is fàng 放 (ant. huán 還 "reinstate as a citizen and inhabitant of a country"), which refers to any official act of removing a person from his permanent abode for a certain time, or in perpetuity.
[LASTING], [OFFICIAL]
2. Chū 出 refers abstractly to the act of causing someone to leave a territory.
[GENERAL], [MARGINAL]
3. Zhú 逐 refers informally and more dramatically to the action of driving away someone not necessarily on the basis of an official or legal decision.
[DRAMATIC]
4. Qū 軀 is a dramatic term for the removal of a person or animal from one's presence.
[DRAMATIC+], [MARGINAL]; [[RARE]]
5. Chù 黜, biǎn 貶 and zhé 謫 "banish from office (and remove to lower office)" (ant. zhuó 擢 "appoint to a higher position") are perhaps marginal in this group, but these common bureaucratic term describing the demotion of a person from his position and often his banishment from the court. See DEMOTE.
[OFFICIAL]
- PERSON
1. Shēn 身 regularly refers to the embodied person, as something to be cultivated and corrected, and as something to be morally careful about, but the word is originally widely used to refer to the physical body as such, and this usage continues throughout pre-Buddhist times being at times hard to distinguish from the figurative use discussed in this group. Moreover, the word is very often reflexive.
2. Qū 軀 is a rare poetic word that can be used to refer to one's embodied person.
3. Jǐ 己 can occasionally refer to one's own person rather than simply to oneself, but the distinction is not marked and should perhaps be disregarded lexically as being imposed by context only.
For the concept of personality, see CHARACTER, and particularly the concept of 為人 "constitutive features of someone's character".
NB: The notion of the personality as something inner and disembodied, only inhabiting a physical as something outward, is alien to ancient Chinese thought. See, however, SOUL, where a number of mentalistic terms are in strict opposition to the physical body. The Chinese words for the person are not in this group.
- BODY
[[CONGERIES]]
1. The general word for the body versus the heart and soul is xíng 形 (ant. xīn 心 ) but note that this word also applies generally to non-human physical shape..
2. Qū 軀 "physical frame" refers to body as seen from the outside, objectively, not as part of the person, and as constituted by flesh and bones.
3. Shēn 身 (which also means "person") specifically refers to the main trunk of the body typically excluding head, arms and legs.
4. Tǐ 體 refers to body as constituted by its various parts, in particular the limbs, and when it refers to the body as a whole the reference is to the posture and carriage of the body.
5. Zhī 肢 refers specifically to the limbs and cannot be used to refer to other parts of the body at all. See LIMB
6. Gōng 躬 is an elevated word which can be used to refer to a person as a whole, but also specifically to the body. See PERSON
7. Xíng tǐ 形體 is the standard current binome for the physical body of both men and animals, including the body after death, among other things as the container of vital energy qì 氣.
NB: Shī 尸 refers specifically to the dead body. See CORPSE
- SOUL
1. Shén 神 is primarily a subtle physical substance which gives man his spiritual dimension (ant. xíng 形 "body")) and the body xíngtǐ 形體 is the abode shè 舍 of the soul..
2. Líng 靈 (ant. qū 軀 "body") is a spiritual part of man which links him to the higher religious realm of the spirits.
3. Jīng 精 "spiritual subtle substance" is the seminal supremely subtle material substance that gives man his spiritual energies.
4. Hún 魂 "male soul which returns to Heaven at death" and pò 魄 "female soul which returns to Earth at death" (all ant. xíng 形 "body") inhabit man in the general mode of spiritual possession.
- TORSO
幹，特指身體的主要部分，即軀幹。
- Word relations
- Contrast: (BODY)身/PERSON
Shēn 身 regularly refers to the embodied person, as something to be cultivated, and as something to be morally careful about, but the word is originally widely used to refer to the physical body as such being at times hard to distinguish from the figurative use discussed in this group. The word is very often reflexive. - Assoc: (BODY)形/BODY
The general word for the body versus the heart and soul is xíng 形(ant. xīn 心).