Quadruplication (linguistics)

Quadruplication (Chinese: 四叠字, literally "four-fold characters") is a method of forming CJK characters via ideographic repetition. Ken Lunde describes these characters as "clusters of four or more identical elements, along with three identical elements in a row arranged horizontally or vertically".[1] These characters were mostly used in Old Chinese writings and are no longer commonly used, except as components in some modern Han ideographs such as 惙.[2]

Examples

Quadruplicate Character English Meaning Notes
𪚥 (obsolete) verbose; talkative 龍 ("dragon" in a grid of four)
䲜 the appearance of many kinds of fish used in the chengyu 生活䲜䲜
㸚 (obsolete) sparse and clear only found in historical dictionaries such as the Shuowen Jiezi

See also

References

  1. ^ Lunde, Ken. "UTN #43: Unihan Database Property "kStrange"". www.unicode.org.
  2. ^ Yuan, Alex (11 August 2020). "A Discussion on the Approach of "Connections" to Chinese Character Studies in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language". Chinese Language Teaching Methodology and Technology. 3 (1): 46. ISSN 2572-1739. Retrieved 24 December 2025.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.