shā
noun #74,916

Meanings

  1. 1 (TCM) acute illness such as cholera, sunstroke, or heatstroke
  2. 2 rash; measles (in 痧子)

Examples

HSK 6
Nǎinai chángyòng guāshā de fāngfǎ zhìbìng.
Grandma often treats illness using the gua sha method.
HSK 7-9
Tā zài lùshàng zhòng le shǔ, fā le shā.
He got heatstroke on the road and came down with sha.

Tips

culture
is a traditional Chinese medicine concept covering a cluster of acute conditions (heatstroke, cholera-like illness, food poisoning). The treatment 刮痧 ('scraping sha') is the well-known practice of scraping the skin with a smooth tool to draw out 'bad qi'.
memory
The radical on the left always signals an illness. The right side gives the sound.

Components

radical
sickness; illness (radical)
Outer sickness radical, a stylized bed-on-its-side with a person leaning against it, picturing illness. The indexing radical, files in the medical family: illness, pain, rash, disease, epidemic. Marks as a TCM disease category, the cluster of acute summer illnesses (heatstroke, cholera-like spasms) traditionally treated by scraping 刮痧.
phonetic
shā
sand
Inner supplies the sound, shā exactly, no shift. Pure phonetic role; the 'sand' meaning contributes nothing semantically. Same phonetic family: sand-stone, sedge, shark. The medical name likely picks up the phonetic via shared metaphor with the gritty, fine red spots (the rash sense in 痧子) but that semantic link is loose at best.

Stroke Order

shā