Why is 遞 = (辶 + (厂 + 虎))?

Question

遞 is most commonly used, nowadays, to mean "to pass" -or- "to give".

Here's the definition of its simplified counterpart 递 given on zisea:

①传送，传达：传～。投～。～送。～交。～眼色（以目示意）。呈～国书。

②顺着次序：～补。～变。～增。～减。～升。～降。

③古代指驿车。

I can only see 遞 (辶 + (厂 + 虎)) as the walking tiger factory, which I'm sure is quite absurd, but even 虒 is defined, on zisea, again, as

“委～”古书上说的一种似虎有角的兽。

in which case we have 遞 = 辶 + 虒, or the moving sī...

厂 doesn't actually mean factory as a radical, it just happened to come to mean this when simplified chinese made it a character on its own that meant this (traditional: 厰). It's also not usually worth taking chinese characters for their literal components. Some characters do work like this, such as 休, but almost 90% of characters are phono-semantic -- one part shows meaning while the other shows how to pronounce it (see cress' answer) — sqrtbottle, Sep 2, 2015 at 6:11

cress · Accepted Answer · 2015-09-01 17:01:21Z

3

Actually, 遞=辵+虒, it's a pictophonetic character which original meaning is "to alternate".

The meaning radical(形旁) 辵 carries the basic meaning "to walk one moment and stop the next".

The sound radical(声旁) 虒 only indicates the pronunciation of 遞(dì).

answered Sep 1, 2015 at 17:01

cress

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