Kanji who's radicals/parts don't make any sense with the meaning

Like the kanji for starving, 飢, whose parts are “eat/food” and “table”. What?

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It’s about being so hungry that you can eat the table itself…

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I mean fair. I wonder what others are weird like that tho.

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Or, instead of “table”, you can associate with “skin” (肌)

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Originally, the kanji was a semantic/phonetic pairing - the 食 half is the semantic component, which contributes to the meaning of the kanji, while the 几 half is the phonetic component, which contributes to the reading (Wiktionary says that reading was “*krilʔ” in Old Chinese, but I haven’t the foggiest idea how to read that).

You’ll find that most kanji are semantic/phonetic type, which means that the components aren’t necessarily entirely useful for generating a mnemonic (though WaniKani generally ignores that concept and makes a mnemonic anyway).

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the fact that Belthazar the cat just said the phrase “haven’t the foggiest“ in a Japanese forum is simply amazing and my life is nearly complete

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Search on Youtube for “Potato Jason”. He ran a few very entertaining presentations on weird kanji :rofl:

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Is that the guy who lives in a cave and skews the stats on how many potatoes the average person eats in their lifetime?

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It’s 3 AM here.

Why do I suddenly have a craving for a ‘loaded’ baked potato, with cheese, bacon, and sour cream on top?

My microwave oven is calling my name.

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With a bit of finesse I can rewrite that as a crude attempt at a 5-7-5 haiku:

By calling my name

My microwave oven is

A cruel master

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