胚 (pēi): embryo

Meanings

1 embryo
2 germ
3 bud (early stage of development)

Characters

胚

pēi

embryo; germ

Examples

胚胎发育是生命科学的重要研究领域。

Pēitāi fāyù shì shēngmìng kēxué de zhòngyào yánjiū lǐngyù.

Embryonic development is an important research area in life sciences.

小麦胚芽富含营养，对健康有益。

Xiǎomài pēi yá fùhán yíngyǎng, duì jiànkāng yǒuyì.

Wheat germ is rich in nutrients and beneficial to health.

Tips

memory

胚 has the 月 (flesh/body) radical on the left. The right side 不 (bù) is phonetic. Think of 胚 as the 'not-yet' body — an embryo at the earliest stage.

Components

radical

⺼ ròu

flesh; body tissue (radical form of 肉)

Flesh radical on the left (the meat-月, distinct from moon-月) — the indexing radical for body-tissue chars. An embryo is a small mass of living flesh in development, so the radical does direct semantic work. Same family of anatomy chars: 肝 (liver), 脏 (organ), 胎 (foetus), 肚 (belly), 肉 itself.

phonetic

丕 pī

great; basic (here phonetic)

Right side 丕 supplies the sound (pī → pēi with vowel rounding). 丕 originally meant 'great, primary' — and an embryo is exactly that, the primary form, the original seed of a body. The phonetic-meaning fit is unusually tight here. Same phonetic seeds 坯 (unfired pot — another 'raw, primal form').