What is the definition of six books?

Xu Shen in the Eastern Han Dynasty defined the six books of Shuowen Jiezi as follows:

1, one refers to things, things, visible with the eyes, visible with observation, and up and down;

The first name refers to things, which means: the shape and structure seem to be recognized, but the meaning of the words it embodies can only be known after investigation. The word "up and down" is an example.

2, 2, pictographic characters, pictographic characters, painted objects, carried with you, the sun and the moon;

The second is pictograph, which means: draw an object by drawing, and the wave twists and turns of strokes are consistent with the situation of natural objects, such as the word sun and moon.

3, three tones, sounds, in the name of things, examples complement each other, rivers also;

The third name is pictophonetic characters. The meaning of pictophonetic characters is to choose comparable phonetic symbols and semantic symbols to form characters according to the nature and name of things. The word He Jiang is an example. 4, four knowing, knowing, friendship is more than class, depending on the fingers? Wu Xin is also;

The fourth is to know, which means: combine the morphemes related to things to form a text; Through the mixing of morpheme meanings, we can know the meaning or intention of new words, such as Orfila.

5, five days to turn notes, turn notes, build classes, agree to accept each other, and keep taking exams;

The fifth kind is Zhuan Zhu, which means: taking the word as the head and the word as the root, making a universal word, inheriting the shape, sound and meaning of the root word, and having the same meaning as the root word, such as Kaur Word.

6, six borrowed, borrowed, this has no words, leaning on the sound, the commander also.

The sixth kind is called borrowing. Borrowing means: don't make words for something, but find a homonym according to the name of something, such as the word primate.

Extended data

Application of Six Books

In fact, there were no six books before the ancients made Chinese characters. Because Chinese characters had developed quite systematically in Shang Dynasty, there were no records about six books at that time. Liu Shu is a system for later generations to analyze and summarize Chinese characters.

However, when the "Six Books" system came into being, people used this system as the basis when creating new words. It seems that "dà i" and "ā i" are pictophonetic characters, "concave", "convex" and "dàng" are demonstrative words, while "Chinese" and "Chinese" (?

In Oracle Bone Inscriptions and inscriptions on bronze, hieroglyphics are the majority. This is because drawing things is the most direct way to create words. However, with the development of characters, more and more things need to be carefully divided, such as "carp", "shad", "shad" and "loach", all of which are fish, and it is difficult to draw their characteristics and differences carefully by pictographic methods.

Therefore, pictophonetic characters have become the most convenient method. As long as you use the word "fish" next to the shape, you can explain their genus, and then distinguish these words with similar pronunciation. Because pictophonetic characters are very efficient in creating new words, less than half of the characters in Oracle Bone Inscriptions era were pictophonetic characters, but in modern times, 80% of Chinese characters are pictophonetic characters.