zhū
noun #4,809

Meanings

  1. 1 cornelian cherry
  2. 2 dogwood (used in 茱萸)

Examples

Chóngyángjié yǒu chā zhūyú de xísú.
There is a custom of wearing dogwood on the Double Ninth Festival.
茱萸
Biàn chā zhūyú shǎo yī rén.
Everyone wears dogwood, but one person is missing.

Tips

culture
appears in the famous Tang dynasty poem by Wang Wei (王维): 遥知兄弟登高处,遍插茱萸少一人. It is associated with the Double Ninth Festival (重阳节).

Components

radical
cǎo
grass; plant (top radical)
Top grass radical (3-stroke compressed form of ) - anchors in the world of plants. The grass-radical heads almost all flora vocabulary; here it specifies that 茱萸 is a small flowering shrub, not a stone or a metal.
phonetic
zhū
vermilion; bright red
Bottom (vermilion red) - supplies the exact sound zhū AND adds a striking semantic hint: 茱萸 berries are bright crimson. itself depicts the red core inside a tree. So reads literally as the red-berried plant. Same phonetic in (pearl), (tree-stem).

Stroke Order

zhū