Happy New Year! Or is it so happy right now? Quite possibly, you’re home with one of these:

宿酔 (shukusui: hangover)

And how would I know that you happen to be at home with your hangover? Well, if you’re feeling sick, it’s likely that you’ll want to stay home. But beyond that, the “ingredients” in 宿酔 more or less mandate that you be at home:

宿酔 (shukusui: hangover)     home + to become intoxicated

Actually, it would seem from the breakdown (the kanji kind, not the bodily sort) as if you had gotten drunk at home, too. But I’ll leave such matters to your discretion. You could probably succeed in getting drunk in any number of locales.

Bodily Matters

Continuing the short-and-sweet approach to holiday blogs that I started two weeks ago, here are a few cool compounds about other bodily matters:

病徴 (byōchō: symptom)     sick + sign

A symptom is a sign that you’re sick! Indeed it is! (This is, by the way, a very rare word.)

産卵 (sanran: spawning)     to give birth to + egg

I don’t know quite why this combination charms me so much, but it seems infinitely cooler than if the first kanji had been 出 (de(ru): to come out). I also like the idea that rather than laying an egg, an animal gives birth to an egg. There’s a double birth, then; chicks that emerge from eggs can call themselves “born-again chickens.” (Unfortunately, though, 産卵 seems limited to fish. Too bad. “Born-again fish” doesn’t have quite the same ring.)

Sample Sentences with 産卵 …

Opposites Attract

Let’s jump from the laws of reproduction to the laws of attraction, which generally comes first. As you know from both magnetism and popular psychology, opposites attract. Ah, but do those relationships make it past the attraction stage? Why do we hear so little about that part of it?

Anyway, that’s true when it comes to kanji compounds, too. In fact, one can list eight ways in which kanji combine to form compounds, one of which is that kanji with opposite meanings combine.

Eight Ways in Which Kanji Combine …

Contradictory kanji combine in loads of words, but I find these two especially neat:

古今 (kokon: anytime)     then + now
東西 (tōzai: anywhere)     east + west

Ah, we’ve come full circle, because I started this blog by saying you could get drunk anytime and anywhere. So now you have more precise coordinates to help you find those things on a map. Look east and west. Also, look back to “then” or stay in the here and now. You can even combine the four coordinates in this compound:

古今東西 (kokontōzai: anytime, anyplace)
     then + now + east + west

Ah, that’s the coolest of compounds!

Time for your Verbal Logic Quiz!

Verbal Logic Quiz …