鳃 (sāi): gills (of a fish)

Meanings

1 gills (of a fish)

Characters

鳃

sāi

gills

Examples

鱼用鳃呼吸。

Yú yòng sāi hūxī.

Fish breathe through gills.

他切开鱼，看到了红色的鳃。

Tā qiēkāi yú, kàndào le hóngsè de sāi.

He cut open the fish and saw the red gills.

Tips

memory

鳃 has the fish radical 鱼 on the left — a giveaway that the word relates to fish anatomy. The right side 思 (sī, 'think') here only carries the sound, not the meaning.

Components

radical

鱼 yú

fish

Left fish radical — pictograph with head, body, scales, and tail, simplified from 魚. The indexing radical and the natural semantic anchor: 鳃 names the organ a fish uses to breathe, so it sits in the anatomical-fish family alongside 鳞 (scale), 鳍 (fin), 鳔 (swim bladder).

phonetic

思 sī

think

Right 思 supplies the sound sī → sāi through a regular vowel shift. Pure phonetic borrowing; the 'thinking' meaning of 思 has no bearing on the gill organ. Same phonetic core appears in 腮 (cheek), which is essentially 鳃 with the meat radical instead.