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noun #5,383

Meanings

  1. 1 belly; abdomen
  2. 2 stomach

Examples

Wǒ dùzi è le.
I'm hungry.
Tā dùzi téng.
He has a stomachache.

Tips

usage
肚子 (belly; stomach) is extremely common in daily speech, as in 拉肚子 (to have diarrhea) and 啤酒肚 (beer belly).
mistakes
Watch the tone. The body-part sense is dù (fourth tone): 肚子 (belly). When the word means an animal stomach used as food, the reading switches to dǔ (third tone), as in 猪肚 (pork tripe) and 毛肚 (beef tripe for hotpot). That food reading has its own entry.

Components

radical
ròu
flesh; meat (left-side form ⺼)
Left flesh radical, graphically identical to (moon) but historically the side-form of (flesh). Whenever it appears on the left of a body-related character it means flesh. Anchors in the body-organ family alongside (stomach), (liver), (face), (waist).
phonetic
earth; soil
Right component supplies the sound: tǔ shifted to dù through an Old Chinese sound change. Pure phonetic role; the earth meaning plays no part. Same phonetic in (spit), (block; surname), a tight tǔ/dù cluster around this shape.

Stroke Order