胖 (pàng): fat; plump

Meanings

1 fat; plump
2 overweight

Characters

胖

pàng

fat; plump

Examples

HSK 2

我最近胖了很多。

Wǒ zuìjìn pàng le hěn duō.

I've gained a lot of weight recently.

HSK 2

那只猫很胖。

Nà zhī māo hěn pàng.

That cat is very fat.

HSK 2

小时候我很胖。

Xiǎoshíhòu wǒ hěn pàng.

I was very chubby when I was little.

Tips

culture

In China, saying someone looks 胖 is less taboo than in the West. Friends and family may casually say 你胖了 ("you've gained weight") as an observation, not an insult.

mistakes

Two readings to keep apart: 胖 (4th tone) is the everyday adjective "fat / plump" - opposite of 瘦 - and the reading in nearly every compound (肥胖, 胖子, 发胖). A literary 胖 (2nd tone, "at ease / contented") survives only in the chengyu 心宽体胖 - never use pán in modern speech.

Components

radical

⺼ ròu

flesh; meat (left-form)

Left flesh radical, the side-form of 肉. Drawn as a small grid of folded meat, it marks 胖 as a body-and-flesh word: the body padded with extra meat. The radical anchors a huge body-part family - 肩, 腿, 肝, 脸, 肚 - and broadly any vocabulary describing the meat of a body.

phonetic

半 bàn

half

Right 半 supplies the sound - bàn shifted to pàng, with regular Old Chinese labial alternation between b- and p-. 半 itself depicts an ox split in two (eight-stroke ox 牛 cut by 八 "split"), but that "half" meaning is incidental here, read mainly for sound. Same phonetic series includes 伴 (companion), 拌 (mix), 绊 (trip up).