Hand
January 21, 2010
by Nao
te, de, shu, ta, zu
“Te” is a hand. Migite is the right hand. Hidarite is the left hand. I think you can guess what migi and hidari mean.
When you admire a child who is good at doing something, you can say, “jōzu.” Since heta has the opposite meaning, you had better avoid saying it to somebody. Jōzu consists of up and hand while heta consists of down and hand. The exact same combinations of these characters have different meanings. For example, kamite means the upper part or the right of the stage. Shimote means the lower part or the left of the stage. When the characters of heta are reversed, they form the word teshita, which means a follower. Teshita often obeys a mob leader.
Karate is a martial art. Karate is practiced with empty hands called sude. You can get further information about karate from here at Wikipedia.
Some professions have this character. For this usage, its reading is shu. A singer is kashu. Ka means a song. An assistant is joshu. Jo means to help. An athlete is supōtsu senshu. Supōtsu, which is written in katakana, means sports. The sen of senshu means to choose. Kishu is a rider. Ki means to ride a horse. In the baseball field, a pitcher is tōshu and a catcher, hoshu. Tō means “to pitch” and ho, “to catch.”
“Te” meaning a hand is often used in idiomatic expressions. “Neko no te” means a cat’s hands. “Neko no te” is something you might want to borrow when you are extremely busy. You can say, “neko no te mo karitai,” meaning, “I want to borrow even a cat’s hands.” “Oku no te” is something you use as a last resort. Oku is the interior. “Hi no te” is a blaze. It rises rapidly. “Hi no te ga agaru“ implies blazing up. “Mago no te” literally means a hand of your grandchildren. It is actually a tool shaping like a small hand for scratching your back.
Tehon means model handwriting. It is a technical word in calligraphy. In a calligraphy class, we usually add the prefix “o-“ to make it sound polite, calling it otehon.
- Draw the sweeping stroke on the top.
- Draw the horizontal stroke below the previous stroke.
- Draw the longest horizontal stroke.
- Draw the curve with the upward turn at the end.
