屠 (tú): to slaughter (animals for food)

Meanings

1 to slaughter (animals for food)
2 to massacre
3 (surname) Tu

Characters

屠

tú

to slaughter

Examples

屠夫每天清早就开始工作。

Túfū měitiān qīngzǎo jiù kāishǐ gōngzuò.

The butcher starts work early every morning.

这座城市在战争中被屠城了。

Zhè zuò chéngshì zài zhànzhēng zhōng bèi tú chéng le.

This city was massacred during the war.

Tips

usage

As a single character, 屠 most often appears in compounds: 屠杀 (massacre), 屠夫 (butcher), 屠宰 (slaughter). Also a surname, as in Nobel laureate 屠呦呦 (Tú Yōuyōu).

Components

radical

尸 shī

corpse; body (radical)

Outer-top 尸 is the corpse / reclining-body radical, indexing 屠. Originally a side-view drawing of a seated or reclining person, in butchery contexts it stands for the slaughtered body laid out for cutting. The radical pins 屠 firmly in the family of body-related chars (尾 tail, 屁 fart, 屎 excrement) but here the deathly sense dominates.

phonetic

者 zhě

one who; -er

Inner 者 supplies the sound — zhě drifting to tú through the old t-/zh- alternation visible across the same phonetic series (都 dū, 堵 dǔ, 赌 dǔ). The 'one who' meaning is purely grammatical and doesn't enter; 者 is a pure sound-tag. 屠 names the slaughterer's trade; modern survivals: 屠夫 butcher, 屠杀 to massacre.