血 (xuè) · blood

Meanings

1 blood

Characters

A pictograph of a drop of blood inside a sacrificial vessel - itself the indexing radical for a small family of blood-related characters.

Examples

HSK 4

医生量了我的血压。

Yīshēng liáng le wǒ de xuèyā.

The doctor measured my blood pressure.

HSK 5

他需要紧急输血。

Tā xūyào jǐnjí shūxuè.

He needed an emergency blood transfusion.

HSK 7-9

献血可以救人。

Xiànxuè kěyǐ jiù rén.

Donating blood can save lives.

Tips

register

血 is the formal / written / medical reading. Almost every technical, literary, or fixed-phrase compound uses xuè: 血液 (blood, the fluid), 输血 (transfuse blood), 血压 (blood pressure), 献血 (donate blood).

register

Northern colloquial speech often pronounces 血 as xiě in everyday talk about bleeding - 流血, 出血, 鸡血. Same word, same meaning - only the surface pronunciation differs. Dictionaries, medical writing, and Mandarin-news broadcasts use xuè.

Components

pictograph

血 xuè

blood

A pictograph of a sacrificial vessel 皿 with a single drop above it - the drop of blood being offered. Oracle-bone forms show the drop clearly inside the bowl. 血 is itself a Kangxi radical and indexes a small family of blood-related characters such as 衅 (to smear with blood) and 衄 (nosebleed).

Radical

Blood Kangxi #143

A small ritual radical: 血 indexes a handful of blood-and-rift characters (衅, 衄, 衊). The graph shows a drop above a sacrificial vessel 皿 - originally depicting blood smeared on ritual implements during sacrifice. Low productivity in modern Chinese; most blood-related vocabulary builds on 血 itself rather than chars filed under this radical.