Of course some do, but for many characters, their definitions seem so wide and arbitrary, its as if the character in and of itself doesn't really have a meaning on its own. Has anyone put thought into this or know more about this? For example, consider the following from cc-cedict:

　營
　army, to deal in, to trade,
　to operate, to run, camp,
　nourishment, to manage

Can this character really be used (by itself) in so many ways, or does it get its meaning when you combine it with the other words it belongs to, ie:

　營業
　to do business / to trade
　運營
　to operate / to be in motion / to do business /
　經營
　to engage in (business etc) / to run / to operate

I think its an important question to consider, because learning so many seemingly arbitrary disparite meanings for a single character is difficult, and probably a waste of my time.

Anyway interested to hear what other people have to say on the matter.

Basically yes, although I still remember my Chinese gf once saying to me, "characters dont mean anything on their own!".

1. When learning a new character it's best to look at the Chinese translation rather than the English one since you might be really wasting your time. For some characters like 徊 this character really doesn't really mean anything on it's own and the C. definition even tells you to look at another character

〔徘（pái）～〕见“徘”。

(from http://dict.baidu.com/)

So you can see that by learning the English definition here is slightly misleading.

2. but for the character you give 营 (I take it the simplified and trad. meanings are the same!?) the dictionary gives 5 definitions

1.
军队驻扎的地方，借指按编制集体生活的地方：～地。～房。～垒。军～。野～。阵～。步步为～（军队前进一步就设一道营垒，喻行动谨慎，防备极严）。
2.
军队的编制单位，连的上一级。
3.
筹划，管理，建设：～业。～作。～田。～造。经～。国～。私～。
4.
谋求：～求。～生。～救。～养。钻～。
5.
姓。

(from http://dict.baidu.com/)

or

动词
1.（谋求） seek
2.（经营; 管理） operate; run; manage
名词
1.（军队驻扎的地方） camp; barracks
2.（军队的编制单位） battalion
3.（姓氏） a surname

(from http://www.iciba.com)

The fact that it has a definition shows that the character can be used on it's own, although an interesting further question as to what is the relative frequency of its being used on its own and the frequency of it being used with other characters.

3. Another way of looking at the question is to look at how the character is used in the actual language. So if you enter the word in http://dict.bing.com.cn
which finds the word in real texts you can see that the word is actually used on its own sometimes, and sometimes with other characters, although, again, it's an open question as to what is the relative frequency rates of these different usages.

Basically though if there are many results from that website (bing) then you know that it's actually used in the language (营 has tons) but if it has just a few or zero then you know that it's best to learn it in combination with other characters and forget about the English translation.

4. Anther way to think about it is when you encounter a character that has multiple meanings don't try to learn all the meanings at once, if you can get one that should be enough. The others will come over time by learning other words associated with it (especially if it's a common character like 营).

I generally don't use Skritter for words, only compounds, for just the reason you have identified here. However, I do try to pay attention to the meaning of single characters when studying the words they are in, since I know I will probably see them again some day in a different word. Eventually I hope I could guess the meaning of unfamiliar words by decoding the characters.

Great post, Antimacassar.

I definitely follow this point in my own studies:

"4. Another way to think about it is when you encounter a character that has multiple meanings don't try to learn all the meanings at once, if you can get one that should be enough. The others will come over time by learning other words associated with it (especially if it's a common character like 营)."

When I learn a new character that seems to be used mostly in numerous, tenuously-related compounds, I will pick one of the compounds that I already know the vocab term for (or one that seems the most useful/common if I don't know any of them yet) and forget about the rest for the time being.

Agreed with valymer and Antimacassar on point 4. In the case of 营 I so far only hold myself to remember the "operate" and "nourish" definitions for the single character, because those make sense in the context of the other compound words I've learned with it. Trying to learn all definitions outside the context of a text or even other common compound words is a recipe for frustration, I think.

Well.. this may not be very useful to you, and I don't know how justifiable it is, but when I come across a simple character that appears to have disparate meanings, I try to think of a concept that might encompass as many as possible.

For example, in the case of;

營
　army, to deal in, to trade,
　to operate, to run, camp,
　nourishment, to manage

The first thing that springs to mind is "logistics". If you are managing an army on the move, you have to organize a lot of provisioning, trade with local people etc, to get food for the camped troops. That just about covers the various meanings.

This doesn't work for all characters, some really do seem to be completely disparate, but in some cases this approach can be useful.

This is all very great and useful feedback, thanks. Im very glad I raised the question now.

I am only just starting to try out using the chinese dictionary, but this sounds like a reasonable good first step when adding new single character words, use this to work out how many actual real meanings there are.

I do also remove the less significant definitions as well.

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