KA KE hana (flower)

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Character Etymology:

The radical for grass/plants placed above the radical for change, to give a meaning of change in the state of plants, i.e. blossoming.

A listing of all on-yomi and kun-yomi readings:

on-yomi: KA KE
kun-yomi: hana

Nanori Readings:

Nanori: wa

English Definitions:

1. KE, KA: flower.
2. hana: flower, blossom, cherry blossoms, essence, spirit, pride; pearl; best days; youth; beautiful woman; flower arrangement; flower-card game.
3. hana(yakana): gay, showy, brilliant, gorgeous.
4. hanaya(gu): become brilliant.

Unicode Encoded Version:

花

Unicode Encoded Compound Examples:

花屋 (hanaya): Flower shop.
花束 (hanataba): Bouquet.
花祭り (hanamatsuri): Buddha's birthday festival (April 8).
花鳥風月 (kachoofuugetsu): beauties of nature; elegant pursuits..

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Flower, that part of a plant which is destined to produce the seed.

~ ~ ~

Flowers, Colors of. The colors of flowers have been arranged in two series, the blue and the yellow, in both of which red and white are found, green being produced by a mixture of the two. It has been estimated that in an average collection of 1,000 plants about 284 have white flowers, 226 yellow, 220 red, 141 blue, 73 violet, 36 green, 12 orange, 4 brown, and 2 black. White flowers are more generally odoriferous than those of other colors, and their odors are almost always agreeable. Red flowers, though less numerous than yellow ones, are more often sweet-smelling.

Entries from Everybody's Cyclopedia, 1912.

Bring Sally up
And bring Sally down
Lift and squat
Gotta tear the ground

Ol' Miss Lucy's dead and gone
Lef' me here to weep and moan...

But is that it, really?

Green Sally up
And Green Sally down
Last done squat
Gotta till the ground

Ol' Miss Lucy's dead and gone
Lef' me here to weep an' mourn...

If you're a modern music listener, you're probably familiar with this mondegreen-fodder via the hard mix action of Moby, who slammed this short catchy rhyming chant onto the very beginning of the soundtrack to Gone in Sixty Seconds, a paean to fast cars, L.A. car culture, and the 1967 Shelby Mustang GT500.

Lyrics sites on the internet disagree wildly about what the lyrics actually are. Moby isn't saying in any really obvious way, although (fair warning) I did little research on this other than to look at his website and paw through some CD booklets.

I have a serious problem with this song. When I come across it on shuffle play on my iPod when in my car, I find myself reaching over to click the 'back' button repeatedly. I have completed three-hour car trips with just this song playing, on repeat, over and over. Providing rhythm to the night drive, it'll reverberate through my forebrain; I'll swear that the slight pulsing of my foot on the accelerator will in fact mesh with some secret desire of my car, deep in its Teutonic heart, to conform to a clockwork beat. The car will not rev, no matter how faintly, unless I move my foot the exact same amount but at a different beat. If the music is playing when I'm driving, Darth and I are synced up in SMPTE, the other version: Synchronic Motion Per Total Echo.

Ninety-five MPH.

Green Sally Up
And Green Sally Down
Lift and squat
Gotta tear the ground

((beat//beat//five seconds * 2kRPM * 8 cylinders / 4 strokes = 416.7 injector cycles//beat//beat//stoichiometry in gasoline perfection//green//green//go//go//...))

Green Sally Up
And Green Sally Down
Last one start
Gotta till the ground

What the hell is it? One website, cocojams.com, tells us¹ that the song is likely based on a Southern Negro Work Song (read: slave chant) which is called 'Green Sally Up' and can be found on a disc by Alan Lomax². I can't locate that disc on Amazon.Com, but then again, that only makes it seem more authentic. Conjecture offered there is that the song is a work song to time the husking of corn (Green Sally for an unhusked ear). Ol' Miss Lucy would have been the slaveowner's wife, allowing those who liked her to express that fact as well as vice versa.

Where did Moby get his sample? I'm not sure, but a playlist from U.S. Radio station WRVU makes reference to the song "Green Sally Up" sung by Jesse Pratcher, Mattie and Maey Gardner, off "Sounds of the South-4" which I'll take to mean disc 4 of 4 of the Lomax set.

Google Books offers a brief reference. In "A Dictionary and Catalog of African-American Folklife of the South" by Sherman Pyatt and Alan Johns, on page 21 of the Dictionary, there is a reference to it. It is called a 'clapping game' which had lyrics beginning with "Green Sally Up, Green Sally Down, Green Sally bake her possum brown."

I admit, though, that if that's the case, whoever selected the song for Gone in Sixty Seconds has performed some actual alchemy. The song makes perfect sense to me as a slave work song. It also synchromeshes perfectly with my internal image of the inside of a powerful internal combustion engine, surrounded by the other bits of PFM that make up the modern automobile. Add tarmacadam. Add gasoline. Add a bit of oil. Add some water, and bam.

Press the pedal.

Watch the lights swing past the dark slab of windshield, orange/brown sodium swaying in the night under the engine's control, one...two...three...four...five...green sally up...green sally down...lift and squat gonna tear the ground...

1 - http://www.cocojams.com/green_color_up.htm
2 - Alan Lomax, "Sounds of the South" (Atlantic Records, 1993). Disk 4.

Flow"er (?), n. [OE. flour, OF. flour, flur, flor, F. fleur, fr. L. flos, floris. Cf. Blossom, Effloresce, Floret, Florid, Florin, Flour, Flourish.]

1.

In the popular sense, the bloom or blossom of a plant; the showy portion, usually of a different color, shape, and texture from the foliage.

2. Bot.

That part of a plant destined to produce seed, and hence including one or both of the sexual organs; an organ or combination of the organs of reproduction, whether inclosed by a circle of foliar parts or not. A complete flower consists of two essential parts, the stamens and the pistil, and two floral envelopes, the corolla and callyx. In mosses the flowers consist of a few special leaves surrounding or subtending organs called archegonia. See Blossom, and Corolla.

⇒ If we examine a common flower, such for instance as a geranium, we shall find that it consists of: First, an outer envelope or calyx, sometimes tubular, sometimes consisting of separate leaves called sepals; secondly, an inner envelope or corolla, which is generally more or less colored, and which, like the calyx, is sometimes tubular, sometimes composed of separate leaves called petals; thirdly, one or more stamens, consisting of a stalk or filament and a head or anther, in which the pollen is produced; and fourthly, a pistil, which is situated in the center of the flower, and consists generally of three principal parts; one or more compartments at the base, each containing one or more seeds; the stalk or style; and the stigma, which in many familiar instances forms a small head, at the top of the style or ovary, and to which the pollen must find its way in order to fertilize the flower.

Sir J. Lubbock.

3.

The fairest, freshest, and choicest part of anything; as, the flower of an army, or of a family; the state or time of freshness and bloom; as, the flower of life, that is, youth.

The choice and flower of all things profitable the Psalms do more briefly contain. Hooker.

The flower of the chivalry of all Spain. Southey.

A simple maiden in her flower Is worth a hundred coats of arms. Tennyson.

4.

Grain pulverized; meal; flour.

The flowers of grains, mixed with water, will make a sort of glue. Arbuthnot.

5. pl. Old. Chem.

A substance in the form of a powder, especially when condensed from sublimation; as, the flowers of sulphur.

6.

A figure of speech; an ornament of style.

7. pl. Print.

Ornamental type used chiefly for borders around pages, cards, etc.

W. Savage.

8. pl.

Menstrual discharges.

Lev. xv. 24.

Animal flower Zool. See under Animal. -- Cut flowers, flowers cut from the stalk, as for making a bouquet. -- Flower bed, a plat in a garden for the cultivation of flowers. -- Flower beetle Zool., any beetle which feeds upon flowers, esp. any one of numerous small species of the genus Meligethes, family Nitidulidae, some of which are injurious to crops. -- Flower bird Zool., an Australian bird of the genus Anthornis, allied to the honey eaters. -- Flower bud, an unopened flower. -- Flower clock, an assemblage of flowers which open and close at different hours of the day, thus indicating the time. -- Flower head Bot., a compound flower in which all the florets are sessile on their receptacle, as in the case of the daisy. -- Flower pecker Zool., one of a family (Dicaeidae) of small Indian and Australian birds. They resemble humming birds in habits. -- Flower piece. (a) A table ornament made of cut flowers. (b) Fine Arts A picture of flowers. -- Flower stalk Bot., the peduncle of a plant, or the stem that supports the flower or fructification.

© Webster 1913.

Flow"er (?), v. i. [imp. & p. p. Flowered (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Flowering.] [From the noun. Cf. Flourish.]

1.

To blossom; to bloom; to expand the petals, as a plant; to produce flowers; as, this plant flowers in June.

2.

To come into the finest or fairest condition.

Their lusty and flowering age. Robynson (More's Utopia).

When flowered my youthful spring. Spenser.

3.

To froth; to ferment gently, as new beer.

That beer did flower a little. Bacon.

4.

To come off as flowers by sublimation.

Observations which have flowered off. Milton.

© Webster 1913.

Flow"er, v. t.

To embellish with flowers; to adorn with imitated flowers; as, flowered silk.

© Webster 1913.