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

献血可以救人。

Xiànxuè kěyǐ jiù rén.

Donating blood can save lives.

医生量了我的血压。

Yīshēng liáng le wǒ de xuèyā.

The doctor measured my blood pressure.

他需要紧急输血。

Tā xūyào jǐnjí shūxuè.

He needed an emergency blood transfusion.

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.