庙 (miào): temple; shrine

Measure Word

一座庙 zuò

Meanings

1 temple; shrine

Characters

庙

miao

temple; shrine

Examples

山上有一座古老的庙。

Shānshàng yǒu yī zuò gǔlǎo de miào.

There's an ancient temple on the mountain.

每年春节很多人去庙里烧香。

Měinián Chūnjié hěnduō rén qù miào lǐ shāoxiāng.

Every Spring Festival, many people go to the temple to burn incense.

Tips

usage

庙 is the general word for temple. More specific terms: 寺 (sì) for Buddhist temples (少林寺), 观 (guàn) for Taoist temples, 庙 itself often refers to folk religion temples or ancestral halls. The phrase 跑了和尚跑不了庙 (the monk can run but the temple can't) means 'you can't escape forever.'

Components

radical

广 yǎn

shelter; roof (radical)

Upper-left shelter radical — a roof extending out from a back wall. The indexing radical, placing 庙 in the building family with 府, 庭, 廊, 廓. A temple is fundamentally a roofed compound, so the radical does real semantic work here.

semantic

由 yóu

from; cause

Inside 由 — graphic stand-in only. The traditional 廟 had 朝 (cháo, 'court') under the roof, giving 'ancestral court / hall.' When simplified in the 1956 reform, 朝 was replaced by the visually simpler 由; the sound link broke and 由 here is a pure shape placeholder, not a working phonetic.