noun #96,326

Meanings

  1. 1 bean stalks; the dried stems of pulse plants

Examples

Nóngcūn lǐ dòuqí bèi dàngzuò cháihuo shāo.
In the countryside dried bean stalks are burned as firewood.
Rán qí zhǔ dòu bǐyù gǔròu xiāngcán.
Burning beanstalks to cook beans is a metaphor for kin harming kin.

Tips

history
is famous from Cao Zhi's Seven-Step Poem: 煮豆燃豆萁 ('boiling beans by burning the beanstalks'), the beans and their own stalks stand for brothers turning on each other. The word now survives mainly in that allusion and in 豆萁.

Components

radical
cǎo
grass; plant
The grass radical marks this as a plant word, fitting, since it names the stalks of a crop.
phonetic
its; that
supplies both the sound qí and, here, no extra meaning, it is purely the phonetic component below the grass radical.

Stroke Order