zhū
noun #4,809

Meanings

  1. 1 cornelian cherry
  2. 2 dogwood

Examples

HSK 7-9
Chóngyángjié yǒu chā zhūyú de xísú.
There is a custom of wearing dogwood on the Double Ninth Festival.
HSK 7-9
茱萸
Biàn chā zhūyú shǎo yī rén.
Everyone wears dogwood, but one person is missing.

Tips

culture
appears in the famous Tang dynasty poem by Wang Wei (王维): 遥知兄弟登高处,遍插茱萸少一人. It is associated with the Double Ninth Festival (重阳节).
usage
A bound character: it appears in 茱萸 (dogwood) and 山茱萸 (Asiatic cornelian cherry), not on its own.

Components

radical
cǎo
grass; plant (top radical)
Top grass radical (3-stroke compressed form of ) - anchors in the world of plants. The grass-radical heads almost all flora vocabulary; here it specifies that 茱萸 is a small flowering shrub, not a stone or a metal.
phonetic
zhū
vermilion; bright red
Bottom (vermilion red) - supplies the exact sound zhū AND adds a striking semantic hint: 茱萸 berries are bright crimson. itself depicts the red core inside a tree. So reads literally as the red-berried plant. Same phonetic in (pearl), (tree-stem).

Stroke Order

zhū