猫 (māo): cat

Measure Word

一只猫 zhī

Meanings

1 cat
2 to hide oneself (dialectal verb)
3 modem (loanword shortening)

Characters

猫

māo

cat

Animal radical 犭 + phonetic 苗 (sprout) - sound shifts miáo → māo to match the cat's call.

Examples

我家有两只猫。

Wǒ jiā yǒu liǎng zhī māo.

My family has two cats.

这只猫是白色的。

Zhè zhī māo shì báisè de.

This cat is white.

他在房间里猫了一下午。

Tā zài fángjiān lǐ māo le yī xiàwǔ.

He hid in his room all afternoon.

Tips

culture

招财猫 ('beckoning cat') is the lucky cat figurine with a waving paw seen at shop entrances across East Asia - believed to bring good fortune and customers.

usage

猫咪 and 猫猫 are baby-talk forms, like 'kitty'. 小猫 means kitten. The colloquial verb sense 'to hide' shows up in 躲猫猫 (hide-and-seek).

register

Rare second reading 猫 (rising tone) is locked to one dialectal verb: 猫腰 ('to stoop / bend over'). Taiwan Mandarin reads the same compound with māo. Outside this one word, 猫 is always māo.

Components

radical

犭 quǎn

dog; animal (radical form of 犬)

Left-side animal radical, the side form of 犬. Used for most four-legged mammals despite the 'dog' name - 猫 (cat), 狮 (lion), 狐 (fox), 狼 (wolf), and 猴 (monkey) all carry it. Files cats with the broader animal kingdom rather than as a unique pictograph.

phonetic

苗 miáo

seedling; sprout

Right side 苗 supplies the sound (miáo → māo, just a tone shift) - classic Chinese onomatopoeia for 'meow'. 苗 itself is 艹 over 田 (a sprout in a field) and contributes nothing semantic; the cat-naming logic was 'whatever sounds like miāo'. Cute coincidence: seedlings sprout where cats hunt.