At 1:12 AM -0400 07/11/2000, Marvin Long, Jr. wrote:
>(From the reading around I've done over the years, I gather that people
>who use the word qi don't always use it the same way: apparently it can
>mean anything from ordinary breath to a kind of animist life-force, and
>even people from the similar general backgrounds--two accomplished Chinese
>martial artists, say--might disagree over how to define it.)
The characters used to write the two versions of the word are similar, of
course. One is just a kind of cascading/breath type of sign, the other (the
sense of "qi" as like the "life-force") adds the character for rice beneath
it. Of course, there is some bleedover I guess and obviously they are
related (as breath and life-force often are), but that particular word
(with that same tone) apparently has at least those two semi-distinct
nexuses of meaning.
