抜群 (batsugun)。

Learned a neat new word today from 習字の先生： 抜群, batsugun. 先生 translated it as "outside the flock/pack"—羊 is hitsuji, "sheep"—and she says it's used pretty often in Japan.

Today we reviewed kana る　の　お　く　や　ま　and moved on to け　ふ　く　え　て　あ. Then kanji: I'm still working on 景雲飛 in sousho (草書).　C——さん is working on 亀龍壽, which I think must be much trickier than my 景雲飛.

漢字：列・なる、例・えば、烈、裂。

The kanji 列 (レ, レツ, RETSU) is also of interest because although it means a row/column/rank/file, if you add ninben (the 人 radical in the hen position, on the left) you get 例 (たと/レイ), an example.

(And now 例えば is making me think of conditional forms and なぜなら. たとえる, to give an example? たとえば, if an example were given.... なぜなら、　if you want to know why.... ほかの同様な表現があるかなあ。)

But in 列 and 例 we have those bones again, just as in 残 (ザン, ZAN). And cutting.　Henshall先生 explains that once (昔々) there was a strict sequence to dismembering a carcass (cutting it to the bone), one task after another, and that adding ninben led to people in a row and thus comparisons and somehow examples. (Henshall includes among the meanings of 例 likening and precedents.) So, 例外 レイガイ, reigai, outside of precedent—an exception.

Searching Saiga's kanji dictionary and Kotoba for all containing those two 部首 (bushu, radicals) yields a few other kanji:

• 烈 (RETSU. 列 with the fire radical) meaning violence/intensity
• 裂 (RETSU, sa・ku, sa・keru, 列 with the clothing radical), meaning severing/cleaving or bursting. Per Henshall, this originally referred to cutting cloth (in sequence), and then to rending cloth, and then to splitting or bursting other things. 凄い。

Kotoba adds eight more to the list, mostly with on'yomi of RETSU/RECHI/REI and no meaning given. With radical sansui, it's mayo・i, pure. With kusakanmuri, it's ashinoho, sedges. With kuchihen, a mouth, it's (not surprisingly) a gaping or stretched mouth, a grimace.

Anyway, so it makes sense that 列 might double for 連 sometimes, when the sense is linking/joining/continuity/sequence/succession—which is the question that got us thinking about RETSU in the first place. I guess it must have been chosen for meaning and then picked up the reading of つら・なる from existing spoken language.

面白い: Henshall gives as an example (例) the compound 烈女 (RETSUJO), a heroine, a furious/intense woman. Among the possibilities for "hero/protagonist", nothing seems to use 烈.

変：　Just looked up 例える (tatoeru), and the dictionary says it's "to compare". So there's once again that idea of comparison that Henshall says somehow evolved from ranks of people/soldiers. I kinda see how comparing might mesh with examples, but...実は。。。。

Fun with compound verbs (動詞) .

There's something particularly expressive about compound verbs, something I'm liking. Many of them seem to involve 思う (to think):

- 思う (to think) + 出す (to emerge) = 思い出す (to remember)
- 思う (to think) + がく (? possibly to frame, as in a picture) = 思いがく (to imagine)
- 思う　(to think) + 切る (to cut) = 思い切る (to reach a decision)

Other examples:
- 閉める (to tie/cinch) + 殺す (to kill) = 絞め殺す (to strangle)
- 考える (to consider) + 直す (to correct) = 考え直す (to reconsider)
- 呼ぶ (to call) + 掛ける (to hang or suspend) = 呼び掛ける (to telephone, to address a crowd)
- 選る (to decide) + 分ける (to classify) = 選り分ける (to sort out)
- (just about anything) + 始める (to begin) or 続ける (to continue) or 終わる (to finish) = begin to do / continue doing / finish doing that thing

And, of course, with our friend 付く:

- 思う (to think) + 付く (to connect/attach/stick) = 思い付き （notion/(brainstorm)

This one's puzzling:

- 酔う (to get drunk) + 払う (to pay) = 酔っ払う ("to get drunk", but...to blow money getting drunk? Must be a nuance to the meaning.)

Verbal adjectives "bind" in this way, too:

- 読む (to read) + やすい (easy) = 読みやすい (easy to read)

Here's a really neat one derived from an ichidan verb:

- 耐える (to endure) + 難い (difficult) = 耐え難い (unbearable). There's muzukashii 難 again.

I notice that the first verb is in the base 2 form; is this related to the "continuation form" I mentioned before? そうかも知れないね。。。。 今眠いので考え寝よう。

Kanji: 駄.

「駄目」の駄と「下駄」の駄は同じ漢字だみたい。面白い。どうしてんだろう？　

The radicals are a horse (馬へん) and fat/thick (太い)。先生 told me that often kanji that share a tsukuri will also share the 音読み of that tsukuri—so I think TA must come from 太.

ヘンシャー先生の本に調べよう*。。。。 Couldn't easily find in Henshall because it's filed as DA, a reading that I thought was primarily rendaku; Henshall doesn't even include TA. But Kotoba is very well cross-referenced and leads me to Henshall 1541.

Kotoba gives a primary meaning of burdensome, and the compounds it lists tend to be about foolishness/worthlessness or shoddiness. Henshall says it means a pack-horse, written with 太　or 大, and that because pack-horses were cheap it took on that meaning, too.

So do you suppose geta is written 下駄 because geta are under you and support your weight, or because they're under you and they're cheap? 「駄目」の表現の場合には、よく使う言葉だから、漢字の意味か音が重要だかも知れない。 I guess the sense of foolishness works, but 目 may be there just phonetically.

Here's something fun I discovered while looking up 駄目: damemoto (駄目元)—which Kotoba defines as giving something a try because one has nothing to lose. 「する」と使われるかなあ。**

*Originally I was going to use 相談する instead of 調べる, but I couldn't decide on "を相談する" or "二相談する".
**That's me trying to use the passive form of 使う. 駄目元したね。

Google has let me down; 下駄を張っている動物の写真がないんだ。

Sugiru (過ぎる）.

That line 時過ぎて has me thinking. I've always heard of 過ぎる as meaning going beyond or too much, but now I see that it can also mean passing, as in time. Henshall先生 says the kanji depicts movement (the radical shinnyuu/shinnyou) and vertebrae, with some uncertainty about the kuchi. He says the tsukuri carried a phonetic sense of substantiality.