Absurdly Hard Chinese Characters #1

Today's absurdly difficult Chinese word is

邋 遢

lā       ta

 邋 遢 is the adjective "sloppy". 

Let's first look at 邋 which has a whopping 19 strokes to the word. I saw so many radicals (parts) that I had to blow up the word to actually figure out how it is written. On its own, the word is an enigma, I couldn't find the etymology so I will try to break it down into its component radicals so it makes more sense than a mass of squiggles.

You would first recognise the 巛 (chuān) radical on top because you would have learnt or come across the word 巡 (xún), to patrol or tour. 巡 is made up of radicals 巛 (chuān) and of course 辶 (chuò) which means "road" or "to walk". 

Incidentally, 巛 is an archaic variant of the radical 川 (chuān) which means stream or river.

Next, you would recognise the bottom part that looks like the legs of a cockroach lined up in a row. It occurs in the word for "mouse" or "rat", 鼠 (shǔ). Notice how this word has no component radicals, I checked the etymology and the seal character looks like this:

It is the remnant of the primitive ideograph of a mouse with legs and whiskers!

You of course write the mass on the right first, then the 辶(chuò) radical last. Much like the icing that goes on at the end of making that big cake.

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Next, the word 遢 (ta) which is in the neutral tone. 遢 which itself has 14 strokes, means "careless" and "slipshod". It's pretty easy to write as it has three fairly common component radicals: 日, 羽 and 辶.

日(rì) is the word for "sun" and it does look like a sun doesn't it? The bronze and oracle characters in fact were circles with a dot or little dash in the middle.

羽 (yǔ) , a feather, goes commonly with the word "shuttlecock": 羽毛球

Finally, we've already talked about  辶 (chuò), which is written last.

So there you have it. Two absurdly hard to write Chinese words which most Singaporeans probably would never use on a normal day even though they are common enough in our standard vocabulary.