脏 (zāng): dirty

Meanings

1 dirty
2 filthy
3 to get something dirty

Characters

脏

zāng

dirty; filthy

Examples

你的手很脏。

Nǐ de shǒu hěn zāng.

Your hands are very dirty.

这件衣服太脏了，要洗了。

Zhè jiàn yīfu tài zāng le, yào xǐ le.

This piece of clothing is too dirty, it needs to be washed.

别说脏话。

Bié shuō zānghuà.

Don't use dirty language.

Tips

usage

Covers both physical grime (脏衣服 = dirty clothes) and figurative impurity (脏话 = profanity, 脏水 = dirty water / mudslinging).

mistakes

脏 and 脏 share one simplified glyph but two traditional forms: 髒 (dirty, zāng) vs 臟 (organ, zàng). Context picks the reading — 心脏 'heart-organ' is zàng; 脏话 'profanity' is zāng.

Components

radical

⺼ ròu

flesh; meat (left-side form)

Left flesh radical, the side-form of 肉 (flesh) — graphically identical to 月 (moon) but historically distinct. The PRC reform merged the older 'dirty' character 髒 onto this organ-radical glyph, so the flesh radical here carries no semantic load for the zāng 'dirty' reading — it is structural reuse, not a clue to meaning.

phonetic

庄 zhuāng

village; solemn

Right side supplies the sound: 庄 → zāng (cognate shift, retroflex zh- to dental z-). The simplified form borrows this organ-glyph and uses 庄 as a convenient phonetic for the dirty reading; the older 髒 used 葬 as phonetic on a bone radical.