屠 (tú) · to slaughter (animals for food), to massacre

Meanings

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

Characters

屠

tú

to slaughter

Examples

HSK 6

屠夫每天清早就开始工作。

Túfū měitiān qīngzǎo jiù kāishǐ gōngzuò.

The butcher starts work early every morning.

HSK 6

这座城市在战争中被屠城了。

Zhè zuò chéngshì zài zhànzhēng zhōng bèi túchéng 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.

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.