section_path: Classification/Semantographs/Compound ideographs
section_name: Compound ideographs
paragraph_text: Compound ideographs
  
  Compound ideographs (会意; 會意; huìyì)—also called logical aggregates, associative idea characters, or syssemantographs —combine other characters to convey a new, synthetic meaning. A canonical example is 明 ('bright'), interpreted as the juxtaposition of the two brightest objects in the sky: ⽇ 'SUN' and ⽉ 'MOON', together expressing their shared quality of brightness. Other examples include 休 (' rest '), composed of pictographs ⼈ 'MAN' and ⽊ 'TREE', and 好 (' good '), composed of ⼥ 'WOMAN' and ⼦ 'CHILD'.
  
  Many traditional examples of compound ideographs are now believed to have actually originated as phono-semantic compounds, made obscure by subsequent changes in pronunciation. For example, the Shuowen Jiezi describes 信 (' trust ') as an ideographic compound of ⼈ 'MAN' and ⾔ 'SPEECH', but modern analyses instead identify it as a phono-semantic compound—though with disagreement as to which component is phonetic. Peter A. Boodberg and William G. Boltz go so far as to deny that any compound ideographs were devised in antiquity, maintaining that secondary readings that are now lost are responsible for the apparent absence of phonetic indicators, but their arguments have been rejected by other scholars.