秧 (yāng): seedling

Meanings

1 seedling
2 rice seedling
3 stem or vine of a plant
4 young livestock; fry

Characters

秧

yāng

seedling; sprout

Examples

农民正在田里插秧。

Nóngmín zhèngzài tiánli chāyāng.

The farmers are transplanting rice seedlings in the paddies.

西瓜秧爬满了整个棚架。

Xīguā yāng pá mǎn le zhěnggè péngjià.

The watermelon vines have spread all over the trellis.

鱼秧子要养在专门的池子里。

Yú yāng zi yào yǎng zài zhuānmén de chízi li.

Fish fry have to be kept in a dedicated pond.

Tips

culture

插秧 (chāyāng, transplanting rice seedlings) is one of the most iconic farming scenes in China - and the rhythm of bent-over labor gave rise to the folk dance 秧歌 (yāngge, literally 'seedling song'), still performed across north China at festivals.

memory

禾 (grain) + 央 (center) - picture a young grain plant standing centered in a paddy.

Components

radical

禾 hé

grain; growing rice plant

Grain radical on the left - depicts a stalk of grain leaning under the weight of its ear, the bent stroke at top representing the drooping head. Anchors 秧 to the cereal-crop family alongside 稻 rice, 秋 autumn, 种 plant. Here it pins the meaning directly: 秧 is the young rice shoot that gets transplanted into flooded paddies.

phonetic

央 yāng

centre; middle

Right side 央 supplies the sound directly - same yāng with no shift. The 'centre' meaning of 央 has no semantic role here; it's a pure phonetic pick. Same phonetic clusters in 殃 disaster and 鸯 (in 鸳鸯 mandarin duck), giving 秧 a small family of yāng-readers united only by sound.