脉 (mài): pulse

Meanings

1 pulse
2 vein; artery
3 vein (of a leaf or mineral)
4 connected sequence

Characters

脉

mài

pulse; vein; vessel

Examples

医生正在给他号脉。

Yīshēng zhèngzài gěi tā hàomài.

The doctor is taking his pulse.

这座山脉绵延数百公里。

Zhè zuò shānmài miányán shùbǎi gōnglǐ.

This mountain range stretches for hundreds of kilometers.

你能感觉到自己的脉搏吗？

Nǐ néng gǎnjué dào zìjǐ de màibó ma?

Can you feel your own pulse?

Tips

usage

Common compounds: 脉搏 (pulse), 山脉 (mountain range), 动脉 (artery), 静脉 (vein), 人脉 (personal connections/network).

culture

号脉 (pulse diagnosis) is a core technique in traditional Chinese medicine, where doctors read health through wrist pulses.

Components

radical

⺼ ròu

meat; flesh (radical form of 肉)

Left-side meat-flesh radical — the variant form of 肉 used on the left of compound characters. Visually identical to 月 moon but semantically the body-tissue radical. Indexes 脉 in the anatomy family with 肝 liver, 胃 stomach, 脑 brain. Blood vessels are the body's flow channels, hence 脉 'pulse, vein, artery'.

phonetic

永 yǒng

eternal; long flowing water (here semantic / phonetic)

Right 永 is the simplified stand-in for the older phonetic of traditional 脈; both encode long flowing water (永 itself shows a person swimming a river). The sound link runs yǒng → mài via historical alternation. The flowing imagery doubles as semantic: a 脉 is a channel through which something flows.