dài
noun/measure word HSK 4 #2,234

Meanings

  1. 1 bag; sack; pouch
  2. 2 (measure word) bag of; sack of

Characters

Contains the clothing radical (at the bottom as ), since bags were originally made from cloth.

Examples

Qǐng gěi wǒ yīge sùliàodài.
Please give me a plastic bag.
Tā mǎi le yī dài mǐ.
He bought a bag of rice.
Kǒudài lǐ yǒu shénme?
What's in your pocket?

Tips

usage
doubles as a measure word: 一袋米 (a bag of rice), 两袋面粉 (two bags of flour). Common compounds: 口袋 (kǒudài, pocket), 塑料袋 (sùliào dài, plastic bag), 袋子 (dàizi, bag).
grammar
As a measure word, directly follows the number: 一袋盐 (a bag of salt). As a noun, it needs its own measure word: 一个袋子 (a bag).

Components

radical
clothing; cloth
Bottom indexing clothing radical (Kangxi #145), pictograph of a robe with collar and sleeves. Anchors in the cloth-and-fabric family alongside , , , . A bag was originally just a piece of cloth folded and tied — hence indexed under clothing.
phonetic
dài
to substitute; generation
Top component supplies the sound: dài → dài (exact match, no shift). The 'substitute / replace' sense of also adds a faint flavour: a sack stands in for whatever you'd normally carry by hand — a substitute container. Same phonetic in dài (loan), dài (tortoiseshell).

Stroke Order

dài