Semantic Analysis And Cultural Connotation Of "Cloud" And The Words Including "Cloud"

"Cloud", a word with rich connotations in Chinese, is closely related to people’s daily life. From the perspectives of semantics and rhetoric, this paper attempts to classify the word "Cloud" and its compound words semantically so as to study their semantic features, while also analyzes the rhetorical functions, which mainly achieved through metaphor, metonymy, hyperbole, euphemism and allusion, on the semantic formation of compound words with "Cloud". As a cultural symbol, "Cloud" contains ethnic cultural value, social customs and aesthetic sentiment. Therefore, in the hope of exploring the cultural background and its origin, and based on extensive examination of widely collected linguistic data, the paper suggests that the cultural diversity presented by "Cloud" as well as its compound words is mostly due to the worship for nature, the philosophy of Confucianism and Daoism and the religious culture, including Daoism and Buddhism.