胆 (dǎn): gall bladder

Meanings

1 gall bladder
2 courage; guts; nerve

Characters

胆

dǎn

gall bladder; courage

月 (flesh radical) + 旦 (dawn) — the organ associated with bravery in Chinese medicine

Examples

他胆子很大。

Tā dǎnzi hěn dà.

He's very bold/courageous.

我没有胆量做这件事。

Wǒ méiyǒu dǎnliàng zuò zhè jiàn shì.

I don't have the courage to do this.

他吓破了胆。

Tā xià pò le dǎn.

He was scared out of his wits.

Tips

usage

胆 is strongly tied to courage in Chinese: 胆子大 (bold), 胆子小 (timid), 胆量 (courage), 大胆 (daring). The expression 吓破胆 (scared to the point of breaking one's gall bladder) means 'terrified beyond measure.'

culture

The idiom 卧薪尝胆 (wò xīn cháng dǎn, 'sleeping on brushwood and tasting gall') describes enduring hardship to fuel determination for revenge. It comes from the story of King Goujian of Yue (越王勾践).

Components

radical

⺼ ròu

flesh; meat (radical form)

Flesh radical on the left (the meat-form of 肉, visually identical to 月 moon but a distinct radical). The gall bladder is a fleshy internal organ, so ⺼ is the standard semantic marker. Anchors 胆 in the body-organ family alongside 肝 (liver), 肺 (lung), 肾 (kidney), 胃 (stomach).

phonetic

旦 dàn

dawn (here phonetic)

Right component supplies the sound: 旦 dàn → dǎn with only tone shift. Heavy simplification — the traditional 膽 used 詹 (zhān) here. The simplified 胆 substitutes 旦 for ease of writing; the dàn phonetic match is exact, even if dawn contributes nothing semantically.