菇 (gū) · mushroom

Meanings

1 mushroom

Characters

菇

gū

mushroom

Examples

HSK 4

我喜欢吃香菇。

Wǒ xǐhuan chī xiānggū.

I like eating shiitake mushrooms.

HSK 7-9

这道菜里有蘑菇和金针菇。

Zhè dào cài lǐ yǒu mógu hé jīnzhēngū.

This dish has button mushrooms and enoki mushrooms.

HSK 7-9

草菇产自亚热带。

Cǎogū chǎn zì yàrèdài.

Straw mushrooms are produced in subtropical regions.

Tips

usage

菇 is a bound form, it almost never stands alone. It appears as a suffix in mushroom names: 蘑菇 (button mushroom, the generic term), 香菇 (shiitake), 金针菇 (enoki), 草菇 (straw mushroom), 杏鲍菇 (king oyster). For 'a mushroom' on its own, use 蘑菇.

memory

Top is the 艹 (grass) radical, signalling a plant; bottom is 姑 (aunt, phonetic only). Same shape rule as in 菠 (spinach), 苹 (apple), 茄 (eggplant).

Components

radical

艹 cǎo

grass; plant

Top grass radical, the three-stroke compressed form of 艸. Indexes 菇 in the botanical family alongside 花 flower, 草 grass, 茶 tea, anything that grows from soil. Mushrooms aren't truly grass but the radical groups all soft growing things together for filing purposes.

phonetic

姑 gū

aunt; girl

Bottom 姑 supplies the sound directly, gū to gū, no tonal shift. The same phonetic 古 sits at the core of 古 old, 故 reason, 估 to estimate, 苦 bitter. Picked purely for sound; the aunt-meaning doesn't carry over to mushrooms.