/ lǎo
noun #52,446

Meanings

  1. 1 old woman
  2. 2 husband's mother (in classical texts)

Examples

Biàn kě bái gōng mǔ, jíshí xiāng qiǎnguī.
In the morning you may speak to my father and mother-in-law.
李白梦游天姥
Lǐ Bái xiě guò mèngyóu Tiānmǔ de shī.
Li Bai wrote a poem about climbing Mount Tianmu in a dream.

Tips

history
The mǔ reading is literary. In the Han folk poem about Liu Lanzhi, means 'father-in-law and mother-in-law'. It also names 天姥山, the mountain in Li Bai's famous dream poem.

Components

radical
woman; female
The woman radical on the left marks this as a female relative or elderly woman, fitting for a word meaning grandmother.
phonetic
lǎo
old; aged
On the right it supplies the sound and the meaning together: gives the lǎo reading and directly evokes an elderly person, here an old woman or grandmother.

Stroke Order