Taxonomy of meanings for 郊:　　

Additional information about 郊

說文解字: 【郊】，距國百里爲郊。从邑、交聲。 【古肴切】

Criteria
• SUBURB
  

  1. The current word for the area outside a capital or major city is jiāo 郊, and this word often refers especially to the location of the important suburban sacrifices.

• ALTAR
  

  [+FIGURATIVE/LITERAL]

  [GENERAL/SPECIFIC]

  1. Tán 壇 is the general word for an altar of any kind.

  [GENERAL], [LITERAL]

  2. Shè 社 "altar of the land" is one of the major religious institutions of ancient China.

  [LITERAL], [SPECIFIC]

  3. Jì 稷 "altar dedicated to the gods of grain" is mostly used in conjunction with shè 社 and does not, by itself, represent such an important institution in Chinese cultural history.

  [LITERAL], [SPECIFIC]

  4. Shè jì 社稷 "altars of the land and grain" is also the standard Chinese term for what we might call "the Nation" in modern English, because the essence of a state was seen to be contained in the local sacrifices undertaken at these altars of the land and grain. There is characteristic semantic oscillation between the meaning ALTAR and the meaning NATION. See NATION.

  [+FIGURATIVE], [SPECIFIC]

  5. Jiāo 郊 refers to the suburban altar in the vicinity of a city.

  [LITERAL], [SPECIFIC]

• COUNTRYSIDE
  

  1. The current general word for the undelimited non-urban areas is yě 野 (ant. yì 邑 "urbanised settlement").

  2. Jiāo 郊 is the fairly well-defined cultivated countryside immediately surround a conurbation; it is also the place where "suburban" sacrifices are held. See CITY

  3. Pì 僻 refers to unfrequented outlying parts of the country without strongly suggesting any deficiency in culture.

  4. Bǐ 鄙 refers again to the outlying parts of the countryside that are deficient in "high culture", and these words are predominantly used as adjectives.

  5. Lòu 陋 is a rare word referring to the remote countryside.

  6. Huāng 荒 refers to any lack of cultivated vegetation and even demarkation of fields.

• CITY
  

  1. The most general term for walled urban or semi-urban administrative centres and settlements below the level of the capital, and above the level of the village without any presence of the state administration, is 邑. In OBI the word can also refer to the royal capital.

  2. Dū 都 refers to a larger urbanised settlement with an ancestral shrine for the leading family in the town, and with representatives of the central state government in permanent residence. The word came to refer quite generally to a city in post-Warring States times.

  3. Chéng 城 refers specifically to the part of a city surrounded by the inner city wall chéng 城. But the word is also sometimes used to refer more generally to walled cities.

  4. Guō 郭 refers to the part of a walled city outside the inner city walls chéng 城 but inside the outer city walls guō 郭. Sometimes the outer walls are added on one side only of the inner city walls thus creating a kind of second-level walled city.

  5. Fú 郛 refers to a large guō 郭 "inhabited area between inner and outer city walls".

  6. Jiāo 郊 refers to the cultivated area outside the guō 郭 and bounded by yě 野 "open countryside". See SUBURB