More on 汲

意を汲む (i o kumu: to enter into a person’s feelings)
     mind + to empathize with

You may recognize 汲 as visually similar to 吸 (su(u): to inhale), which we often see in the expression タバコを吸う (tabako o suu: to smoke cigarettes).

Usually, 汲 means “to draw (water), to ladle, to scoop, to pump.” But it also means “to consider” and “to empathize with,” as in 意を汲む.

If you associate 吸 with smoking (as I can’t help doing, since that’s the context in which I learned it), it might seem that 汲 and 吸 are as far apart in meaning as water and smoke! But both kanji derive from 及 (oyo(bu): to reach). In the case of 吸, according to Henshall, the 及 shape acts phonetically to mean “to pull” and probably also means “to draw toward oneself.” When you add the mouth radical 口, you have “drawing with the mouth” or “inhaling.”

Meanwhile, 汲 is so rare that Henshall doesn’t include it. But following the same logic, we have the water radical 氵plus 及 (to draw toward oneself), yielding “to draw water.” Pretty cool!

The kanji 汲 factors into some interesting compounds. Not surprisingly, they feature water:

潮汲み (shiokumi: drawing seawater to make salt)
     saltwater + to draw

You may be wondering if 潮, which means both “saltwater” and “tide,” is the kanji for “salt” (shio). No, that shio has a different character: 塩. These two types of shio most likely share an etymological origin.

汲み入れる (kumiireru: to fill up with water)
     to draw (water) + to insert

Add the movement radical to the second kanji in 汲み入れる and you produce a compound with the same meaning:

汲み込む (kumikomu: to fill up with water)
     to draw water + to put in

Try saying that ten times fast!

I know it seems that my mind’s always in the toilet (or between the legs of some unsuspecting animal), but I can’t resist including this word:

汲み取り(kumitori: scooping up (night soil))
     to draw water + to take

Then, veering sharply away from this focus on 汲 as drawing water (or solids), let’s return to the sense of empathy that we saw in 意を汲む (i o kumu: to enter into a person’s feelings, mind + to empathize with). This empathy can be so deep as to resemble a state of absorption (as if one is empathizing with a topic). Take, for example, this word:

汲々 (kyūkyū: diligence, absorption (in something))
     to empathize with x 2

This compound shows up in the following expression:

汲々としている (kyūkyū toshite iru: to be absorbed in, to think only of)

This expression can have a negative nuance, as when one is so consumed with thoughts about something that one can’t pay attention to anything else. But I choose to see it in a positive way, as if it referred to a happy preoccupation with kanji!

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