Sinograph Addenda · Signs

generation

Name	generation
Reads	shì
Means	generation; the age, the world
Taught in	12 · Making it happen

Where it comes from

Three ten-signs joined at the base into one graph: thirty years, the classical span from parent to child. From “generation” it widened to “the age one lives in” and finally “the world” of that age. Taught in the making-it-happen chapter.

How to remember it

Three tens bound together: a generation.

In the wild

百世可知也。bǎi shì kě zhī yě"a hundred generations can be known" — Confucius' claim that the far future has a shape: each age keeps most of the last one's ways and adjusts the rest, so the pattern carries. Every character is taught

Analects 2.23. urn:nabu:kanripo:KR1h0004:002:24a · license: attribution.