喵 (miāo) · meow (cat sound), mew

Meanings

1 meow (cat sound)
2 mew

Characters

喵

miāo

meow

Examples

HSK 1

猫在叫喵喵喵。

Māo zài jiào miāomiāomiāo.

The cat is going meow meow meow.

HSK 3

喵～你在干什么？

Miāo ～ nǐ zài gànshénme?

Meow~ What are you doing?

Tips

usage

Used online as a cute sentence-ender, especially by younger women: 好的喵～ (okay meow~). Also used as an informal verb meaning 'to meow'.

memory

The mouth radical 口 on the left tells you it's a sound, and 苗 on the right gives the pronunciation - a classic sound-meaning combo character.

Components

radical

口 kǒu

mouth

Left mouth radical - the indexing radical. Marks 喵 as an animal-sound onomatope, putting it with 汪 woof, 哞 moo, 咩 baa, 喔 cock-a-doodle. The 口 signals 'this is a noise made through a mouth' - here a cat's vocalization.

phonetic

苗 miáo

sprout (here phonetic)

Right 苗 supplies the sound: miáo → miāo with tone shift, an exact rime match. The choice is purely phonetic - 苗 (sprout in a field) has no semantic link to cats. Picked because miāo is the closest native syllable to the cat's call, the same way English settled on 'meow.'