猫 (māo): cat

Measure Word

一只猫 zhī

Meanings

1 cat
2 to hide oneself
3 modem

Characters

猫

māo

cat

Animal radical 犭 + phonetic 苗 (sprout) - sound shifts miáo → māo to match the cat's call.

Examples

HSK 1

他在房间里猫了一下午。

Tā zài fángjiān lǐ māo le yī xiàwǔ.

He hid in his room all afternoon.

HSK 2

我家有两只猫。

Wǒ jiā yǒu liǎng zhī māo.

My family has two cats.

HSK 2

这只猫是白色的。

Zhè zhī māo shì báisè de.

This cat is white.

Tips

culture

招财猫 ('beckoning cat') is the lucky cat figurine with a waving paw seen at shop entrances across East Asia - believed to bring good fortune and customers.

usage

猫咪 and 猫猫 are baby-talk forms, like 'kitty'. 小猫 means kitten. The colloquial verb sense 'to hide' shows up in 躲猫猫 (hide-and-seek).

register

Rare second reading 猫 (rising tone) is locked to one dialectal verb: 猫腰 ('to stoop / bend over'). Taiwan Mandarin reads the same compound with māo. Outside this one word, 猫 is always māo.

Components

radical

犭 quǎn

dog; animal (radical form of 犬)

Left-side animal radical, the side form of 犬. Used for most four-legged mammals despite the 'dog' name - 猫 (cat), 狮 (lion), 狐 (fox), 狼 (wolf), and 猴 (monkey) all carry it. Files cats with the broader animal kingdom rather than as a unique pictograph.

phonetic

苗 miáo

seedling; sprout

Right side 苗 supplies the sound (miáo → māo, just a tone shift) - classic Chinese onomatopoeia for 'meow'. 苗 itself is 艹 over 田 (a sprout in a field) and contributes nothing semantic; the cat-naming logic was 'whatever sounds like miāo'. Cute coincidence: seedlings sprout where cats hunt.