NOTE: You should set the document encoding to Traditional Chinese
(BIG5 encoding) to see the Chinese characters.
The Chinese character for a ship (船) is formed from three words:
- 舟, meaning a boat,
- 八, meaning the number eight, and
- 口, literally meaning mouths, i.e. human lives. The Chinese used this word
to mean number of people of lives, as in "一家五口" or five mouths in
a/the family.
Thus, the meaning of 船 is really
8 lives on a boat. In the bible, we read:
On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together
with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark.
(Genesis 7:13)
That is, 8 human lives were saved during the Great Flood.
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