膛 (táng): chest cavity

Meanings

1 chest cavity
2 chamber (of a gun)
3 bore (of a barrel)

Characters

膛

táng

chest cavity; chamber; bore

Examples

HSK 5

子弹还在枪膛里。

Zǐdàn hái zài qiāngtáng lǐ.

The bullet is still in the gun chamber.

HSK 7-9

炉膛里的火还在烧。

Lútáng lǐ de huǒ hái zài shāo.

The fire in the furnace chamber is still burning.

Tips

usage

膛 rarely appears alone. It's most commonly found in compounds: 枪膛 (gun barrel/chamber), 炉膛 (furnace chamber), 胸膛 (chest).

Components

radical

⺼ ròu

meat; flesh (radical form)

Meat-flesh radical on the left, the indexing component and the body-part variant of 肉 (visually identical to 月 but semantically distinct). It marks 膛 as anatomy - the chest cavity - and groups it with body-part chars: 胸 chest, 腹 belly, 脏 organs, 脚 foot.

phonetic

堂 táng

hall; main room

Right side 堂 táng supplies the sound exactly - same syllable, same tone. It also lends a useful image: 堂 is a spacious hall, and 膛 names the inner spacious cavity of a body or barrel. A 'flesh-hall' is a memorable picture for a chest cavity or gun chamber.