鸟 (niǎo): bird

Measure Word

一只鸟 zhī

Meanings

1 bird
2 to pay attention to; to bother with
3 damned; goddamn

Characters

鸟

niǎo

bird

Pictograph of a bird in profile — see the components panel for stroke-by-stroke origin.

Examples

树上有一只鸟。

Shùshàng yǒu yì zhī niǎo.

There is a bird in the tree.

这只鸟会唱歌。

Zhè zhī niǎo huì chànggē.

This bird can sing.

谁也不鸟他。

Shéi yě bù niǎo tā.

Nobody pays him any mind.

Tips

register

Beyond the bird sense, 鸟 has a northern-dialect verb use meaning 'to pay attention to / bother with', almost always negated: 不鸟你 'won't deal with you'. It also bolts onto nouns as a crude intensifier ('damned') in Ming-Qing fiction like the Water Margin. Both senses are colloquial and slightly coarse.

usage

The 儿-suffixed form 鸟儿 sounds affectionate and is common in northern speech.

Components

pictograph

鸟 niǎo

bird

Pictograph of a bird in profile — top stroke is the beak, the curved upper strokes form the head and back, the inner dot marks the eye, and the bottom hook traces a talon. Simplified from 11-stroke 鳥 (whose bottom 灬 was tail feathers, not fire). Kangxi #196, indexing most bird chars: 鸡 chicken, 鸭 duck, 鸽 pigeon, 鹰 eagle.

Radical

Bird Kangxi #196

The long-tailed bird radical, contrast with 隹 (short-tailed). Highly productive — Chinese names most birds with 鸟 plus a phonetic: 鸡 (chicken), 鸭 (duck), 鹅 (goose), 鸽 (pigeon), 鹰 (eagle), 鹤 (crane), 鹊 (magpie). Usually positioned on the right; simplified 鸟 has 5 strokes, traditional 鳥 has 11.