nǎo
noun #1,516

Meanings

  1. 1 brain
  2. 2 mind; head

Examples

HSK 1
Wǒ de nǎo hěn lèi.
My brain is tired.
HSK 1
Yòng nǎo xiǎng yì xiǎng.
Use your brain and think about it.

Tips

usage
rarely appears alone in modern Chinese - it's mostly used as a component in compounds like 电脑 (computer, literally "electric brain"), 脑子 (brain/mind), and 头脑 (head/mind). You'll encounter the compounds far more often than by itself.
history
The character contains the radical (flesh/body radical, originally ) on the left, indicating it refers to a body part. Many body-part characters share this radical: (face), (arm), (leg).

Components

radical
ròu
flesh; body (left-side meat radical)
Left meat radical - this is the body-flesh radical , not the moon radical , despite looking identical. It signals that names a body part, joining (face), (leg), (liver), (stomach) in the anatomy family.
ideograph
tóu
lid; top mark
Top stroke and dot sit as a small cap above - historically traced from a sketch of skull-hair or scalp markings on the original head graph. Visually it caps the lower piece, completing the picture of a cranium.
phonetic
xiōng
ominous; brain-cavity shape
Bottom-right echoes the older traditional 's right side, where the shape pictured the wavy folds of brain tissue inside a skull-bowl. It supplies the rough sound (xiōng → nǎo, drifted) and a vivid skull-cradling-brain image.

Stroke Order

nǎo