Cases where kanji disguises shared etymology?

4 comments

1. Oh, almost any 同訓異字 pair/group you can think of. 暑い・熱い、 早い・速い、測る・図る・計る, and so on. In kun’yomi words, I’d bet that there are more pairs like this than pairs not like this. In kun’yomi world, kanji show meaning but determinedly *not* etymology. You can also think about how words like 試みる is 心見る except it’s never written that way, and plenty of others like that (e.g. 港＝水戸 or 湖＝水海).

2. some words from my classical Japanese dictionary

   息 / 生きる

   赤 / 明るい

   静か / 沈む / 雫(しずく)

3. They’re not quite shared etymology, I would go to the extent and say they were the same verbs, but arbitrarily distinguished because of the availability of kanji.

4. You actually touched on something really interesting here and I’d love to see more examples. I don’t think 早い/速い is the same thing at all, that’s just the same word with different shades of meaning. 綱/繋ぐ・がる・げる is deeper than that because it really shows the actual etymology of that verb. For me it raises questions like doesぐ have some meaning inherent to it and is that why it isn’t 繋む or 繋る? And what is the actual derivation of がる? Does it come from ぐ in some way?

   I personally can’t think of any more examples like this. I can only think of the other kind, where a kanji hides a compound word e.g. 承る=受け賜る, 瞼=目蓋, 茸=木の子etc.