腔 (qiāng): cavity

Meanings

1 cavity
2 accent
3 tune
4 tone of voice

Characters

腔

qiāng

cavity; accent; tone

Examples

他说话带着南方腔。

Tā shuōhuà dài zhe nánfāng qiāng.

He speaks with a southern accent.

口腔卫生很重要。

Kǒuqiāng wèishēng hěn zhòngyào.

Oral hygiene is very important.

Tips

usage

腔 has two main uses: as a body cavity (口腔 oral cavity, 胸腔 chest cavity) and as an accent/tone (腔调 accent, 京腔 Beijing accent, 拿腔拿调 put on airs with one's tone).

Components

radical

⺼ ròu

meat; flesh (radical form)

Left meat-flesh radical (the side-form of 肉, visually identical to 月 moon but a different semantic source) — the indexing radical. Anchors 腔 in the body/anatomy family alongside 胸 chest, 肺 lung, 肝 liver. Originally pictured a slab of flesh with ribbing inside.

phonetic

空 kōng

empty (here phonetic)

Right 空 supplies the sound kōng → qiāng via well-attested k/q palatalization, while also reinforcing meaning: a 腔 is a flesh-cavity, an empty hollow inside the body. From this concrete sense (chest cavity, mouth cavity) come the figurative readings 'tone of voice' and 'accent' — the cavity through which sound resonates.