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The Meanings of Jiao(校) : From ‘Wood Fence’ to ‘Textual Criticism’

Hyoshin Kim 1

1서울대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

‘Jiao校’ is a word with multiple meanings, as Hanyu Dacidian 漢語大 詞典 describes its twenty-four meanings such as ‘pillory’, ‘fence’, ‘a unit of troops’, ‘compare’, ‘collation’, ‘textual criticism’, ‘school’, ‘imitate’ and so on. The aim of this paper is to investigate the original meaning and to examine derived and borrowing meanings of ‘Jiao’ on the basis of a question: where the meaning of ‘textual criticism’ comes from? Through this study, we can confirm several facts below: first, the original meaning of ‘Jiao’ is ‘wood fence’. Many scholars like Duan Yucai段玉裁 argue that the original meaning is ‘pillory’, but it is a fallacy which have come from a misrepresentation of Shuowen Jiezi 說文 解字; second, the original explanation of the word in Shuowen Jiezi might be ‘crossed wood’; third, the meaning of ‘textual criticism’ is a borrowing signification.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.