雌 (cí): female (of animals or plants)

Meanings

1 female (of animals or plants)

Characters

雌

cí

female (animal)

Examples

这只是雌的还是雄的？

Zhè zhīshì cí de háishi xióng de?

Is this one female or male?

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 (nǚ) instead. The pair 雌雄 (cíxióng) 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 (cǐ, 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.