to be (followed by substantives only) / correct; right; true / (respectful acknowledgement of a command) very well / (adverb for emphatic assertion)
是
=
旦
+
龰
:
Mnemonic symbol: a skull, from "to be or not to be".
Sherlock Holmes (sh) starts his day in the space station's bathroom (Ø4) with a mug of coffee (旦). Holding a skull (mnemonic symbol for 是) in his hands, he asks himself "to be, or not to be" (是). He wonders if he can make the skull come back to life using lots of coffee, and injects coffee from his mug into the skull using a syringe (龰).
是
=
日
+
下
+
人
:
Mnemonic symbol: a skull, from "to be or not to be".
Sherlock Holmes (sh) watches the Neanderthal Man (人) trying to climb to the sun (日) on a ladder (下) in the space station's bathroom (Ø4). Sherlock is afraid that he'll open the window, so he puts on a big skull (是) and scares him off.
to not be; not / wrong; incorrect / non-; un-; in-; de- / to reproach; to blame / (coll.) to insist on; simply must
非
=
三
+
丿
+
丨
:
Mnemonic symbol: a negative film (photography).
Frankenstein's monster (f) made an effort to photograph the Eiffel Tower (ei1), but now his negative (非) is a big mess. In front of the tower he set up a camera on a Cartesian coordinate system (三) as a tripod, and he attached a banana (丿) and a dinosaur bone (丨) to the camera so that he can finely tune the angles. All was for naught as he now holds the messed up negative in his hands.