餐 (cān) · meal; food

Meanings

1 meal; food
2 to eat; to dine
3 measure word for meals

Characters

餐

cān

meal; food

Examples

HSK 1

晚餐你想吃什么？

Wǎncān nǐ xiǎng chī shénme?

What do you want for dinner?

HSK 4

一日三餐要按时吃。

Yīrì sān cān yào ànshí chī.

You should eat three meals a day on time.

HSK 4

这家餐厅很有名。

Zhè jiā cāntīng hěn yǒumíng.

This restaurant is very famous.

Tips

usage

餐 is used in: 餐厅 (restaurant), 早餐 (breakfast), 午餐 (lunch), 晚餐 (dinner), 快餐 (fast food), 自助餐 (buffet). 餐 is more formal than 饭 for 'meal.'

Components

radical

食 shí

to eat; food

Bottom indexing food radical 食 - pictograph of a covered food vessel with steam rising. Anchors 餐 in the eating family alongside 饭 (cooked rice), 饱 (full), 饿 (hungry), 馆 (restaurant). The full 食 form (rather than the compressed left-side 饣) appears here because 食 sits at the bottom rather than the left.

phonetic

歺 è

splintered bone (here phonetic)

Top-left 歺 - variant of 歹 (bare bone), here supplying the phonetic core of cān (Old Chinese reading close to *tsʰān). Depicts a stripped bone left after the meat is gone, lending a faint flavor of "what is eaten." A rare component appearing mostly in 餐 and a few archaic compounds.

semantic

又 yòu

right hand

Top-right 又 - pictograph of a right hand. Together with 歺 above-left, the upper portion depicts a hand picking food from bones, the action of eating. The hand contributes the active "taking food" sense that distinguishes 餐 (a meal eaten) from passive food-words.