雌 (cí) · female (of animals or plants)

Meanings

1 female (of animals or plants)

Characters

雌

cí

female (animal)

Examples

HSK 6

这只是雌的还是雄的?

Zhè zhī shì cí de háishi xióng de?

Is this one female or male?

HSK 7-9

雌蚊子才会叮人。

Cí wénzi cái huì dīng rén.

Only female mosquitoes bite people.

Tips

usage

雌 is used for animals and plants. For humans, use 女 instead. The pair 雌雄 means 'female and male' and can figuratively mean 'superiority' in the phrase 一决雌雄 (to have a showdown).

memory

The right side 隹 means 'short-tailed bird'. The left side 此 (this) is phonetic. Think: 'this bird' - the female one sitting on the nest.

Components

radical

隹 zhuī

short-tailed bird

Right side 隹 - pictograph of a stub-tailed bird, Kangxi #172. Indexes 雌 in the bird family with 雄 male of a species, 雅 elegant, 集 to gather (birds on a tree), 难 difficult. 雌 specifically marks the female of paired animals - typically birds - so the radical names the category exactly.

phonetic

此 cǐ

this; here

Left side 此 supplies the sound - cǐ shifted to cí with regular tone change. Same phonetic family in 紫 purple, 疵 flaw. 此 itself (foot + sitting figure) means 'this spot here'; it contributes nothing semantic to the female-bird meaning of 雌, serving purely as the sound peg for the compound.