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

HSK 1

医生正在给他号脉。

Yīshēng zhèngzài gěi tā hàomài.

The doctor is taking his pulse.

HSK 6

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?

HSK 7-9

这座山脉绵延数百公里。

Zhè zuò shānmài miányán shùbǎi gōnglǐ.

This mountain range stretches for hundreds of kilometers.

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

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.