巢 (cháo) · nest; lair; den

Measure Word

一个巢 gè

Meanings

1 nest; lair; den
2 hideout; base (of criminals)

Characters

巢

cháo

nest; lair; den

Examples

HSK 6

蜂巢里有成千上万只蜜蜂。

Fēngcháo lǐ yǒu chéngqiān-shàngwàn zhī mìfēng.

There are tens of thousands of bees in the beehive.

HSK 7-9

鸟儿在树上筑了一个巢。

Niǎo'ér zài shùshang zhù le yī gè cháo.

The bird built a nest in the tree.

HSK 7-9

警方捣毁了犯罪团伙的老巢。

Jǐngfāng dǎohuǐ le fànzuì tuánhuǒ de lǎocháo.

The police destroyed the criminal gang's hideout.

Tips

usage

巢 forms many compounds: 鸟巢 (bird's nest), 蜂巢 (beehive), 老巢 (lair/hideout), 巢穴 (den).

Components

radical

巛 chuān

river; flowing strands (Kangxi radical)

Top 巛 is the river / streaming-lines radical - three wavy strokes, here repurposed as the small heads of three chicks peeping out from the nest. It is the indexing radical of 巢 by Kangxi convention; visually it is the most distinctive part of the character. Same radical: 川 river, 州 island-prefecture.

semantic

果 guǒ

fruit; result

Bottom 果 is the fruit-on-tree pictograph - 田 fruit-cluster over 木 tree. In 巢 it stands for the tree itself (the lower part of the original drawing was an actual tree, later regularized to 果). The full picture: three chicks poking out of a nest perched in a tree. Survives in 鸟巢 bird's nest, 老巢 lair, 蜂巢 honeycomb.