麒麟

Etymology
Qilin was a propitious beast in ancient Chinese mythology, with the shape of a deer, tail of an ox, a single horn and scales all over its body. Old Chinese pronunciation for this word was *g(ɯ)-rin (Zhengzhang), and in pre-Qin times the beast was also referred to as
 * , or
 * , or
 * , or

the last two having been attested in the oracle bone script already. There is much debate as to what animal the qilin beast was; some maintain that the qilin was a beast only found in mythology, even though it may have been based on some animal in pre-historic times, and some argue that the qilin was in reality the river deer, the ox or cow, or the Indian rhinoceros.

During the – Dynasties, the giraffe was introduced to China, either by envoys from other Asian or African countries, or through who commanded multiple expeditionary voyages to Asia and Africa. Besides using the transcription (from 🇨🇬) to name the animal, the Chinese also referred to it as qilin, believing it was the prototype of the mythological beast qilin. Such association may be due to the phonological similarity of the words for “giraffe” in North African languages, to the pronunciation of 麒麟 at the time (i.e. a ). Compare:
 * 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬 and 🇨🇬, (whence 🇨🇬).

The “giraffe” sense of 麒麟 is obsolete in most varieties of modern Chinese, but is preserved in the Sinoxenic loanwords in Japanese and Korean. In modern Vietnamese, this word refers to the beast qilin, as well as the western mythological beast unicorn.

tentatively compares to a Northeast Asian etymon *kalimV, which denotes either "whale" or "mammoth"; however, he cautiously remarks that "[t]he formal and semantic similarity between *kilin < *gilin ~ *gïlin 'unicorn' and *kalimV 'whale' (but also Samoyedic *kalay- 'mammoth') is sufficient to support, though perhaps not confirm, the hypothesis of an etymological connection". He also notes a possible connection between Old Chinese and Mongolian (*)kers ~ (*)keris ~ (*)kiris "rhinoceros" (> Khalkha 🇨🇬).

Noun

 * 1)  qilin propitious mythological beast
 * 2)  outstanding person; man of ability
 * 3)  giraffe
 * 1)  giraffe

Synonyms




Descendants
Others:

Proper noun

 * 1)   district in Qujing, Yunnan province, China

Etymology
From, in turn from. First cited in Japanese to the  of 720.

The sense was probably based on a superficial resemblance between certain depictions of the mythical beast and the patterning and body shape of the real animal: a tailed, hoofed, and horned quadruped with a vaguely leopard-like spot pattern. First cited in Japanese to a text from 1798.

Noun

 * 1)    a qilin
 * 2)    the kirin, a piece in chūshōgi and larger shogi variants
 * 3)   a giraffe
 * 1)    the kirin, a piece in chūshōgi and larger shogi variants
 * 2)   a giraffe