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11-24-2010, 10:54 PM
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(This may sound complicated, but it's something that I had to learn in high school Chinese 'grammar' lessons.) To elaborate further, a morpheme is the smallest component of a word that has semantic meaning. A free morpheme ("自由語素", or 「自由形態素」 in Japanese.), like "town", is free to appear with other words to form compound words, such as "town council", but can also stand by itself as an independent meaningful word. (just "town".) A bound morpheme ("不半自由語"/「束縛形態素 」), on the other hand, cannot form meaningful words by itself, and must combine with other words in specific ways (some always occur at the front, like 'pre-', 'un-' or 'in-', for example) to form meaningful words. A prominent example is the morpheme "cran" in "cranberries" Semi-free morphemes, like "暴" are somewhere between a free and bound morpheme. Like bound morphemes, they generally cannot form independent meaningful words in isolation. Unlike bound morphemes, they are free to combine with other morphemes to form meaningful words without being "locked" in a specific position (at the front or at the back, for example) of a word. In Chinese, "暴" occurs in words such as "狂暴" (violent; adjective), "强暴" (brutal, forceful; adjective) "暴力" (violence; noun), "暴脾气" (bad temper or bad tempered; noun or adjective), and "暴扬" (to broadcast [news]; verb). It can also act as an adverb of sorts when attached to other verbs, forming words like "暴涨" (to suddenly rise) and "暴食" (to wolf down food quickly.) Note the position of "暴" is not 'locked-down' in the examples above. "暴", however, can act as a free morpheme under certain circumstances. It is a valid, 'though rare Chinese family name. "暴" also has an independent meaning of "to waste" or "to ruin" in Classical/Literary Chinese (Wenyan), 'though such use in contemporary Chinese is limited outside idioms such as "自暴自弃". (lit:"To ruin oneself and to toss oneself away." Or more colloquially "To live in abandon" or "To stagnate without any progress.") By extension, I believe 「暴」 may have a similar meaning in Kanbun, but try not to take my word for it. TL;DR version: To most Chinese people, a single character tattoo of "暴" is probably going to look a little odd, 'though it does conjure a 'tough guy' image. This is, however, only true if it's written legibly. (or in artistic calligraphy writing.) Having a "暴" tattoo that looks like it's written by a "blind hippopotamus" is only going to invite laughter and derision. Regardless, I would sincerely recommend against getting a kanji/hanzi tattoo from somebody who can neither write in Chinese or Japanese. (or possibly Korean.) You'll end up as a laughing stock to people who can read either of these languages, even if the tattoo is a meaningful word. You wouldn't want to get an English word tattoo from somebody who couldn't write English letters, right? If you still insist on having a "暴" tattoo, here are some references. "暴" written according to five different Chinese calligraphy scripts (click to zoom): "暴", written by me on lined paper with a pencil in a Chinese calligraphy grip. The calligraphic flourishes are overly angular due to use of a pencil. (Sorry, but I couldn't find a brush.) My hand slipped a bit at the end though, and I haven't done calligraphy in a long time. 
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11-24-2010, 11:52 PM
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As morphemes are linguistic, not pertaining to written language (I forget the "linguistic" adjective equivalent for written langauge off the top of my head...), I assert that "razz" (which is a shortened form of "raspberry") is the same morpheme as the "rasp" in "raspberry," and therefore "rasp" is not a cranberry morpheme. 
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11-26-2010, 02:25 PM
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Edit Mystery solved! The girl's name means "violet." This tattoo means "violent." Someone really screwed up looking a word up in the dictionary! I mean really, really screwed up. This is exactly why you should never get a tattoo in a language you don't speak.
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