豕 (shǐ): pig; swine (literary)

Meanings

1 pig; swine (literary)

Characters

豕

shǐ

pig (literary)

Examples

HSK 7-9

豕突狼奔，形容坏人到处乱闯。

Shǐ tū láng bēn, xíngróng huàirén dàochù luàn chuǎng.

'Boars charging, wolves running' - a set phrase describing thugs rampaging everywhere.

HSK 7-9

古书中常以豕指家猪。

Gǔshū zhōng cháng yǐ shǐ zhǐ jiāzhū.

Ancient texts commonly use 豕 to refer to domestic pigs.

Tips

register

豕 is the literary/classical word for pig - modern Chinese uses 猪 instead. You only meet 豕 in idioms (豕突狼奔), in classical texts, and as the pig-radical inside characters like 家 (home, lit. 'pig under roof'), 豪 (powerful), 豚 (piglet).

history

An oracle-bone pictograph of a pig - long body, short legs, drooping tail. The original 'pig' word; later replaced in everyday speech by 猪 (which itself contains 豕 inside the right half).

Components

pictograph

豕 shǐ

pig; swine

Pictograph of a pig viewed from the side - the top stroke is the head and snout, the central body curves are the back and belly, and the lower diagonals are the legs and tail. Same shape appears as the radical in 豚 (piglet), 象 (elephant), 豪 (bristly hog to hero).

Radical

Pig Kangxi #152

The pig radical. A pictograph of a pig in profile, replaced by 猪 in everyday speech but still the indexing slot for pig and pig-shaped-quadruped characters: 家 (home, originally a pig in a building), 豪 (powerful), 豚 (piglet), 象 (elephant - historically grouped here for shape). Low productivity in modern coining.