胚 (pēi) · embryo, germ, bud (early stage of development)

Meanings

1 embryo
2 germ
3 bud (early stage of development)

Characters

胚

pēi

embryo; germ

Examples

HSK 7-9

胚胎发育是生命科学的重要研究领域。

Pēitāi fāyù shì shēngmìng kēxué de zhòngyào yánjiū lǐngyù.

Embryonic development is an important research area in life sciences.

HSK 7-9

小麦胚芽富含营养，对健康有益。

Xiǎomài pēiyá fùhán yíngyǎng, duì jiànkāng yǒuyì.

Wheat germ is rich in nutrients and beneficial to health.

Tips

memory

胚 has the 月 (flesh/body) radical on the left. The right side 丕 (pī) is phonetic. Think of 胚 as the 'not-yet' body - an embryo at the earliest stage.

Components

radical

⺼ ròu

flesh; body tissue (radical form of 肉)

Flesh radical on the left (the meat-月, distinct from moon-月) - the indexing radical for body-tissue chars. An embryo is a small mass of living flesh in development, so the radical does direct semantic work. Same family of anatomy chars: 肝 (liver), 脏 (organ), 胎 (foetus), 肚 (belly), 肉 itself.

phonetic

丕 pī

great; basic (here phonetic)

Right side 丕 supplies the sound (pī to pēi with vowel rounding). 丕 originally meant 'great, primary' - and an embryo is exactly that, the primary form, the original seed of a body. The phonetic-meaning fit is unusually tight here. Same phonetic seeds 坯 (unfired pot - another 'raw, primal form').