泉

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spring

On-Yomi: セン — Kun-Yomi: いずみ

Elements:

spring, white, dove, water

Heisig story:

Call to mind the image of a fresh, bubbling spring of water, and you will probably notice how the top of the spring you are thinking of, the part where the "bubbling" goes on, is all white. Happily, the white is just where it should be, at the top, and the water is at the bottom.

Heisig comment:

* We will keep this image of a spring when using this kanji as a primitive, but not without first drawing attention to a slight change that distinguishes the primitive from the kanji. The final 4 strokes (the element for water) are abbreviated to the three small drops that we learned earlier as the kanji for little.

Koohii stories:

1) [lilpea] 3-8-2007(181): White is a symbol of purety, so white water is pure water, the precise definition of spring water.

2) [hikarudo] 19-8-2008(123): Perhaps the most common appearance of this kanji is in the word 温泉 (おんせん, onsen), a Japanese hot spring. The kanji is an excellent image of someone enjoying a Japanese hot spring: a little white towel on top, water below. (This helps keep all associations: spring, little and onsen).

3) [Ninjasha] 18-2-2008(43): A fresh SPRING has plenty of frothy white bubbles in its crisp, cool water.

4) [dshill99] 3-2-2008(23): A spring has white frothy water.

5) [akane99] 8-7-2010(7): When SPRING comes, white snow melts and becomes water.

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