Mnemonic comic for 刖
Translation
Mnemonic
A mnemonic is a short, deliberately ridiculous scene, built to be hard to forget. Who appears in it and where it takes place are how the pronunciation is stored; the objects in it stand for the parts the character is written with. That is the Marilyn Method, and the comic below is the same scene, drawn.
Yu the Great (yu) catches the crescent moon (月) tiptoeing on two little feet into the elevator’s bathroom (e4) to spy on him. With one swing of his kitchen knife (刂) he cuts off its feet (刖), then straps a wooden peg leg (刖) to its stump, so the moon can only hobble away.
Comments
How to pronounce 刖
MandarinBanana teaches pronunciation with the Marilyn Method: every Pinyin syllable is one initial plus one final, the initial becomes a person, an animal or a deity, and the final becomes a place in your memory palace — with the tone deciding which part of that place the scene happens in. Remember the little story below for each half and the whole syllable comes back with them.
刖 character breakdown
Chinese characters are built out of smaller characters. Each component carries a mnemonic symbol - one concrete object that stands in for it - and a mnemonic story hands those objects to the person and the place that stand for the pronunciation. Learn a component once and every character that reuses it gets easier.
Characters with 刖 as component
Words with 刖
Want to remember 刖 for good?
Make it your learning target and MandarinBanana works out the shortest route to it: the two sounds its syllable is built from, then the components of the character itself, one short step at a time. No account needed to start.
to amputate one or both feet (punishment in imperial China) (one of the five mutilating punishments 五刑[wu3 xing2])
Prompt snippets
The wooden peg leg is a simple, old-fashioned prosthetic: a tapered, hand-carved oak shaft, dark and worn smooth, with a round black rubber cap at the bottom and a padded cup of cracked brown leather at the top, fastened with two worn leather straps and iron buckles.
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