眉

méi
noun #7,014

Meanings

  1. 1 eyebrow
  2. 2 brow

Examples

HSK 5
Tā de méi hěn nóng.
Her eyebrows are thick.
HSK 7-9
Tā zhòu le zhòuméi.
He furrowed his brow.

Tips

usage
眉 appears in many expressions: 眉毛 (eyebrow hair), 眉头 (space between brows), 眉目 (features/clues), 燃眉之急 (urgent crisis, lit. 'fire burning the eyebrows').

Components

radical
目 mù
eye (radical)
Bottom eye radical (Kangxi #109) - pictograph of an eye stood on its short side, here lengthened by one extra horizontal where the eyebrow joins. Indexes 眉 directly: the eyebrow is anatomically tied to the eye. Family 看, 睡, 瞧, 瞄, 眨. The whole 眉 reads as eyebrow-over-eye once you stop seeing 尸 on top.
semantic
尸 shī
eyebrow shape (graphic top)
Top three strokes - graphically the 尸 'corpse' shape, but in 眉 it's purely a graphic stand-in for the curving eyebrow above the eye. The original oracle-bone form drew curved hair-strokes directly above 目; over time those wavy strokes regularised into this 尸-like silhouette. Don't read it as 'corpse' here.

Stroke Order

眉 méi