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neck
On-Yomi: シュ — Kun-Yomi: くび
Elements:
neck, horns, nose, one, ceiling, drop, eye
Heisig story:
Reading this kanji from the top down, we have: horns . . . nose. Together they bring to mind the picture of a moose-head hanging on the den wall, with its great horns and long nose. Now while we would speak of cutting off a moose's "head" to hang on the wall, the Japanese speak of cutting off its neck. It's all a matter of how you look at it. Anyway, if you let the word neck conjure up the image of a moose with a very l-o-n-g neck hanging over the fireplace, whose horns you use for a coat-rack and whose nose has spigots left and right for scotch and water, you should have no trouble with the character. Here we get a good look at what we mentioned when we first introduced the element for horns: that they can never be left floating free and require an extra horizontal stroke to prevent that from happening, as is the case here.
Koohii stories:
1) [bakamono] 20-8-2007(130): The V shape is your neck on top of your collar bone, or the straight line. Yourself, or the rest of your body is below that!
2) [vosmiura] 24-8-2006(96): The mooses neck supports it's big horns and long nose.
3) [uchifly] 30-9-2009(74): One has a strong NECK if one can carry HORNS on ONESELF.
4) [Wosret] 25-4-2008(58): There are no goddamn animal legs in the Kanji for neck. Stop thinking there are animal legs in the Kanji for neck. There are NONE!
5) [cloudstrife543] 30-10-2008(31): With horns on oneself, you need a strong neck.