鳃 (sāi) · gills (of a fish)

Meanings

1 gills (of a fish)

Characters

鳃

sāi

gills

Examples

HSK 5

鱼用鳃呼吸。

Yú yòng sāi hūxī.

Fish breathe through gills.

HSK 5

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.