舅 (jiù): maternal uncle (mother's brothe…

Measure Word

一个舅 gè

Meanings

1 maternal uncle (mother's brother)

Characters

舅

jiù

maternal uncle

Examples

我舅住在北京。

Wǒ jiù zhù zài Běijīng.

My maternal uncle lives in Beijing.

舅，你好久没来了！

Jiù, nǐhǎo jiǔ méi lái le!

Uncle, you haven't visited in so long!

Tips

culture

Chinese kinship terminology is far more precise than English. 舅 (jiù) specifically means your mother's brother. Your father's brother is 叔 (shū, younger) or 伯 (bó, older). The full form 舅舅 (jiùjiu) is also common. This specificity reflects the importance of distinguishing paternal and maternal lines in traditional Chinese family structure.

Components

radical

臼 jiù

mortar

The top 臼 (mortar) supplies both the indexing radical AND the sound, giving 舅 its pronunciation jiù through phonetic-loan from 臼. The mortar imagery is purely phonetic here — it has no semantic connection to the 'mother's brother' meaning.

semantic

男 nán

male; man

The bottom 男 (male) supplies the meaning — 舅 specifically refers to male relatives on the mother's side (uncles) and the husband's father. The 男-below-臼 stack reads as 'the man named by the 臼 sound', a classic phono-semantic build.