高
gāo
high, tall; lofty, elevated
Meaning
- Physical Verticality: Literal height or tallness (e.g., a person or mountain) and elevation above a base (e.g., an altar, platform, or city wall).
- Social Hierarchy: Rank, authority, or superiority within social and political structures.
- Qualitative/Moral Value: Excellence, refinement, nobility of character, sophisticated style, or intellectual talent.
Grammar and usage
- Adjectival/Stative: Primarily functions as an adjective or stative verb ("to be high").
- Nominal Use: Can function as a noun referring to "height," particularly in later classical prose.
- Verbal Constraints: Not typically used as a transitive verb meaning "to raise" or "to lift." Verbal appearances are generally elliptical constructions (e.g., "[occupies a] high position").
History and forms
- Readings: Fanqie reading 古勞; Tang-period reading *gɑu.
- Variants: Semantic variants U+9AD9 and U+2CEA6 are palaeographic and carry no shift in meaning.
Translator notes
- Superlatives: Avoid assuming an inherent superlative. The glyph does not automatically mean "the highest" or "supreme" without a qualifying intensifier (such as 之至 or 最).
- Architectural Context: When encountering the glyph in architectural descriptions, distinguish between whether the text emphasizes the scale of the object (tallness) or its elevated location.
Decontextualized translator aid. This page describes plausible lexical range; it does not choose what the glyph means in a particular passage.