豚 (tún) · suckling pig, pig (literary/classical)

Meanings

1 suckling pig
2 pig (literary/classical)

Characters

豚

tún

suckling pig; pig (literary)

Examples

HSK 7-9

海豚是聪明的海洋哺乳动物。

Hǎitún shì cōngming de hǎiyáng bǔrǔ dòngwù.

Dolphins are intelligent marine mammals.

HSK 7-9

古文里常用"豚"指小猪。

Gǔwén lǐ chángyòng " tún " zhǐ xiǎo zhū.

In classical Chinese, 'tun' often refers to a piglet.

Tips

usage

豚 rarely stands alone in modern Chinese - you mostly meet it inside compounds: 海豚 ('dolphin'), 河豚 ('pufferfish'), 豚鼠 ('guinea pig'). For 'pig' as a stand-alone word use 猪. 豚 survives as the classical/literary word for 'piglet'.

history

Originally 豚 depicted a hand holding a piece of meat (肉) beside a pig radical (豕) - a piglet ready for sacrifice. The character is widely used in Japanese as the everyday word for pork (豚, buta), but in Chinese it stayed mostly literary.

Components

radical

豕 shǐ

pig; boar

Right 豕 - pictograph of a pig with curling tail. The indexing radical: 豚 specifically names a suckling pig, the young version of the general 豕. Same family: 豪 (originally a porcupine), 象 (elephant, by visual extension), 家 (a roof over a pig - domesticity itself).

semantic

⺼ ròu

meat; flesh (radical form)

Left meat-flesh radical (the body-part variant, visually identical to 月 moon but a different radical). Originally 豚 showed a hand offering meat alongside a pig - a young pig prepared for sacrifice. The meat radical preserves that ritual-food sense, distinguishing 豚 from the wild 豕 to its right.