tún
noun #7,403

Measure Word

一个

Meanings

  1. 1 buttocks; butt
  2. 2 hip; rear

Examples

Tā shuāidǎo de shíhòu shāng dào le túnbù.
He injured his buttocks when he fell down.
Zhège dòngzuò kěyǐ duànliàn túnbù jīròu.
This exercise can work out the gluteal muscles.
Zuò tài jiǔ le, tún dōu mále.
I sat too long, my butt went numb.

Tips

usage
alone is somewhat formal/anatomical. In everyday speech, 屁股 (pìgu) is much more common for 'butt'. 臀部 (túnbù) is the standard medical/formal term.

Components

radical
ròu
flesh; body part (radical form of 肉)
Bottom meat-flesh radical, the body-part form of . Despite the visual resemblance to (moon), this is a different glyph used exclusively for anatomy: chest, leg, organ, back. It indexes firmly in the body-parts family and tells the reader to read everything above it as flesh, not as architecture.
phonetic
殿 diàn
palace hall; rear (here phonetic)
Top 殿 supplies the sound diàn → tún with the regular d/t alternation seen across this phonetic series. 殿 also carries a faint semantic kick: in palace architecture it means the rearmost building, the one set behind all the others — exactly the part of the body names. The buttocks are anatomically the rear hall of the human frame.

Stroke Order

tún