Monday, July 04, 2022

千字文 / The Thousand Character Classic, part 47

 信使可複

xìn shǐ kě fù

"make pledges that can be kept"

 

信 has a number of meanings, most of them involving trust, faithfulness, etc. You can see it in the character's two components: a man 人 (which often takes the form 亻 when used as a component) standing by his word 言. That assessment, which is bit too gimmicky for me most of the time, at least works here without being too much of a stretch.

In modern Mandarin, 信 most commonly means "letter," as in those things few people write to one another anymore. I, however, am a letter-writer, so if you're interested in handwritten correspondence, send me an email.

複 here means "to repeat," which makes sense but sounds weird in English in this context.


微臣
史大偉

 

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