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Squeeze And Press (夹,挤,压,柞)

Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2011 5:56 pm
by coykiesaol
夹,挤,推,压 and 柞 can all be translated by the English words "squeeze" or "press." Could someone kindly explain the difference between them?

Re: Squeeze And Press (夹,挤,压,柞)

Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 6:58 pm
by Yeleixingfeng
夹(夾) means press from both sides, like how you pick up something with a pair of chopsticks. That something is placed in the middle. From the Traditional Character, you can see that a 大 is placed in between two men. Thus, you get the meaning - to exert pressure from both sides of the object.
挤(擠) has two basic meaning, both derived from 'squeeze'. First, it means to get into a space, where the space itself is already crammed with other stuff. Like, squeezing yourself into a room full of people, or stuffing cotton into an already-full pillow. The other meaning is to exert pressure so that something gets out (usually through a hole.) Like squeezing toothpaste so that the the toothpaste within gets out.
压(壓) generally means to exert pressure on a flat surface only from upwards, and shares the metaphoric usage as English in the verb 'pressure', like to pressure the people into paying taxes. (壓迫人民繳稅) In the Traditional Chinese, you see that it is a character made up of 厭 and 土. The 土 denotes that such pressure can only be exerted towards the direction of the Earth, i.e. downwards.
榨 means to extract the liquid out of something, not necessarily through exerting pressure directly onto the object, usually with the aid of a tool. For example, you extract the juice from an orange/sugar-cane. By the way, you got the character wrong - you forgot the 穴 on top of 乍. The 窄 means being narrow, with the top element denoting that this character has a relation to space (穴 means cave). Added with 木 to form 榨, it means that by using a tool (木) the space within an object is made narrow - juice comes out.

Such are the ways to aid in your memorising. ^^ Note that they might not be the accurate reason the character were first created thousands of years ago.