Word.ws English Dictionary

countertomy

countertomy noun: fanqie.

Noun

countertomy

  1. (rare) Fanqie.
    • Here we need mention only such momentous developments as the creation of countertomy or cut-and-splice pseudospelling (fan-ch'ieh), generally attributed for the last thousand years to the Buddhists, which for the first time enabled Chinese to indicate the pronunciation of unknown graphs fairly...1994, The journal of Asian studies
    • Another related phenomenon, which lasted from at least the latter part of the tenth century until the end of the nineteenth century, was the practice of writing fan-ch'ieh (countertomy or reverse cutting), Buddhist-inspired pseudo-spellings as one graph instead of three.2010, Victor H. Mair, The Columbia History of Chinese Literature, Columbia University Press, →ISBN, page 40

Origin of countertomy

From counter- + -tomy, a calque of Chinese 反切.

Questions about countertomy

What does countertomy mean?
Countertomy means fanqie.
What part of speech is countertomy?
Countertomy is a noun.

Words near countertomy in the dictionary

  1. counterthrusts
  2. countertide
  3. countertides
  4. countertime
  5. countertimes
  6. countertomy
  7. countertop
  8. countertop oven
  9. countertop ovens
  10. countertopped
  11. countertops

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: countertomy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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