巢 (cháo): nest; lair; den

Measure Word

一个巢 gè

Meanings

1 nest; lair; den
2 hideout; base (of criminals)

Characters

巢

cháo

nest; lair; den

Examples

鸟儿在树上筑了一个巢。

Niǎo'ér zài shùshang zhù le yīge cháo.

The bird built a nest in the tree.

警方捣毁了犯罪团伙的老巢。

Jǐngfāng dǎohuǐ le fànzuì tuánhuǒ de lǎocháo.

The police destroyed the criminal gang's hideout.

蜂巢里有成千上万只蜜蜂。

Fēngcháo lǐ yǒu chéngqiānshàngwàn zhī mìfēng.

There are tens of thousands of bees in the beehive.

Tips

usage

巢 forms many compounds: 鸟巢 (niǎocháo, bird's nest), 蜂巢 (fēngcháo, beehive), 老巢 (lǎocháo, lair/hideout), 巢穴 (cháoxué, den).

Components

radical

巛 chuān

river; flowing strands (Kangxi radical)

Top 巛 is the river / streaming-lines radical — three wavy strokes, here repurposed as the small heads of three chicks peeping out from the nest. It is the indexing radical of 巢 by Kangxi convention; visually it is the most distinctive part of the character. Same radical: 川 river, 州 island-prefecture.

semantic

果 guǒ

fruit; result

Bottom 果 is the fruit-on-tree pictograph — 田 fruit-cluster over 木 tree. In 巢 it stands for the tree itself (the lower part of the original drawing was an actual tree, later regularized to 果). The full picture: three chicks poking out of a nest perched in a tree. Survives in 鸟巢 bird's nest, 老巢 lair, 蜂巢 honeycomb.