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医

醫
yī
noun #5,099

Meanings

  1. 1 medicine; medical science
  2. 2 doctor; physician
  3. 3 to treat; to cure

Examples

他是一名医生。
Tā shì yī míngyī shēng.
He is a doctor.
我要去医院。
Wǒ yào qù yīyuàn.
I need to go to the hospital.
中医有几千年的历史。
Zhōngyī yǒu jǐqiān nián de lìshǐ.
Traditional Chinese medicine has thousands of years of history.

Tips

usage
医 is used in: 医生 (doctor), 医院 (hospital), 医学 (medical science), 中医 (TCM), 西医 (Western medicine), 医疗 (medical treatment), 医药 (medicine/pharmaceuticals).
culture
中医 (Traditional Chinese Medicine) and 西医 (Western Medicine) coexist in China. Many hospitals offer both, and it's common to use TCM for chronic conditions and Western medicine for acute ones.

Components

radical
匚 fāng
open box; container
Outer indexing radical 匚 — a left-open box, drawn as a top stroke and a bottom-closing stroke around the contents. Pictures a quiver or medicine chest. Same wrapper anchors 区 (district), 匠 (craftsman), 匣 (small box). The container is what holds the arrow inside.
semantic
矢 shǐ
arrow
Inner 矢 (arrow). Compound ideograph: arrow inside a quiver — early healers used arrowheads to lance wounds and drain abscesses, so 'arrow in a box' came to mean 'medicine, treat'. Heavily simplified from traditional 醫 (which added 殳 and 酉 wine for surgical and herbal medicine). Modern PRC 医 keeps just the core image.

Stroke Order

医 yī