道

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road-way

On-Yomi: ドウ、トウ — Kun-Yomi: みち

Elements:

road-way, neck, horns, drop, eye, road

Primitive:

road The road envisioned here is a road for traffic, or a path or walkway. The natural sweep of these three simple strokes should be easy to remember, as it appears so often. [3]

Heisig story:

The key word carries both the sense of a road for transit and a way or method of doing something, but the former is better for forming an image. The primitives read: the neck of a road. Think of a crowded road-way where traffic has come to a standstill - what we commonly refer to as a "bottleneck."

Koohii stories:

1) [Ninjasha] 5-2-2008(198): When we go out on the ROAD-WAY, we often risk our own necks (that's why I take the train! ).

2) [whistler11] 19-12-2005(39): Watch as a villianous fiend stretches a poor damsel's neck over a dusty road. Her ear pressed to the ground, she can hear the rumble of a carriage thundering down the roadway. Will the hero save her in time? Or will her neck be ground into the road, spilling it's precious contents into the dust?

3) [Danieru] 7-7-2008(30): Good keyword selection by Heisig: while the primitive on the left means road, the whole kanji also has the meaning of way, or 'tao (teaching)'. Thus, road + way. (Check out the wikipedia article on the Chinese Philosophical concept of "Tao": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao. It's this character!).

4) [kaminix] 3-3-2008(26): I have a very abstract view for this one. Remember when the kanji for neck (#70 首) was first introduced to us it was compared to a great moose head, cut off by it's neck and hung on the wall? As we all know, mooses have very long necks; if you imagine widening and stretching it a little you'll probably be able to picture yourself taking a stroll on the hairy 'neck-road-way' of the moose. It's a very abstract mnemonic, but I swear, I was not high when coming up with it!

5) [AndamanIslander] 22-1-2008(13): You're going to break your neck on the road way!

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