gài
noun HSK 7-9 #12,469

Meanings

  1. 1 calcium

Examples

Niúnǎi hányǒu fēngfù de gài.
Milk is rich in calcium.
Lǎoniánrén xūyào duō bǔ gài.
Elderly people need to supplement more calcium.

Tips

memory
The radical on the left indicates it's a metal/element. (gài) on the right gives the pronunciation. Common collocations: (supplement calcium), (calcium deficiency).

Components

radical
jīn
metal; gold (radical form)
Left metal radical (the side-form of ) — the indexing radical, marking as one of the modern element characters coined for the chemistry lexicon. Same radical builds iron, copper, zinc, sodium. Whenever a Chinese term names a metallic element, expect anchoring the left.
phonetic
gài
beggar (here phonetic)
Right supplies the sound gài — an exact match with no drift, chosen precisely to match the Latin calcium. The beggar sense plays no part in the meaning; + is a purely modern, sound-driven coinage of the late Qing / early Republican chemistry vocabulary.

Stroke Order

gài