CC-CEDICT WIKI

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====== Bound forms ======

A bound form is a morpheme that only appears as part of a larger expression. In English, bound forms tend to be prefixes or suffixes such as “-ly”, “-est”, “pre-”, “post-” etc and generally are not words by themselves. In Chinese however, characters can either be bound or free, and it can be difficult to determine which. Some characters can have multiple bound and multiple free senses.

There are two types of bound forms in Chinese, those with meanings and those without.

=== Meaningful bound forms ===

These are bound forms where a meaning can be assigned to the character. Oftentimes they appear in multiple words with the same meaning, but never by themselves. We indicate these by prefixing the sense with “(bound form)”.

For instance:

<code>
隘 隘 [[ai4]] /(bound form) narrow/(bound form) a defile; a narrow pass/
</code>

is a bound form as you would not see 隘 alone when reading Chinese. It would always be accompanied by other characters such as 隘口, 隘路, 关隘, 狭隘 etc.

=== Meaningless bound forms ===

These are bound forms where a meaning cannot be assigned to the character, usually because the character appears in a small number of words (usually just 1). Oftentimes these are the names of plants or animals, or terms used in literature. For these characters, the entry is simply “used in …”.

For example:

<code>
鮟 𩽾 [an1] /used in 鮟鱇|𩽾𩾌[an1 kang1]/Taiwan pr. [an4]/
鱇 𩾌 [[kang1]] /used in 鮟鱇|𩽾𩾌[an1kang1]/
鮟鱇 𩽾𩾌 [an1 kang1] /anglerfish/
</code>

𩽾 and 𩾌 by themselves have no meaning, as they are always used with each other. 𩽾𩾌 is the anglerfish.

A small number of meaningless bound forms are used in multiple words, in this case, all should be listed. When the words have the same or similar meaning, they should be combined into one sense, when the words have different meanings, they should be separated into different senses.

Different senses

<code>
螞 蚂 [[ma3]] /used in 螞蟥|蚂蟥[ma3huang2]/used in 螞蟻|蚂蚁[ma3yi3]/
蝲 蝲 [la4] /used in 蝲蛄[la4 gu3]/used in 蝲蝲蛄[la4 la4 gu3]/
蛞 蛞 [[kuo4]] /used in 蛞螻|蛞蝼[kuo4lou2]/used in 蛞蝓[kuo4yu2]/
猻 狲 [[sun1]] /used in 猢猻|猢狲[hu2sun1]/used in 兔猻|兔狲[tu4sun1]/
</code>

Same sense
<code>
箢 箢 [yuan1] /used in 箢箕[yuan1 ji1] and 箢篼[yuan1 dou1]/Taiwan pr. [wan3]/
癔 癔 [[yi4]] /used in 癔病[yi4bing4] and 癔症[yi4zheng4]/
咐 咐 [[fu4]] /used in 吩咐[fen1fu5] and 囑咐|嘱咐[zhu3fu5]/
</code>

An example of both

<code>
螂 螂 [[lang2]] /used in 螞螂|蚂螂[ma1lang2]/used in 蜣螂[qiang1lang2] and 虼螂[ge4lang2]/used in 螳螂[tang2lang2]/used in 蟑螂[zhang1lang2]/
</code>