蛇 (shé) · snake; serpent

Measure Word

一条蛇 tiáo

Meanings

1 snake; serpent

Characters

蛇

shé

snake; serpent

Examples

HSK 3

他很怕蛇。

Tā hěn pà shé.

He's very afraid of snakes.

HSK 6

这条蛇没有毒。

Zhè tiáo shé méiyǒu dú.

This snake isn't venomous.

HSK 6

画蛇添足。

Huàshé-tiānzú.

Drawing legs on a snake. (Ruining something by overdoing it.)

Tips

culture

The snake is the 6th animal in the Chinese zodiac. The idiom 画蛇添足 (drawing legs on a snake) means to ruin something by adding unnecessary details - from a story where a man finished drawing a snake first but lost a contest by adding legs.

culture

The Legend of the White Snake (白蛇传) is one of China's four great folk legends - a love story between a white snake spirit and a human scholar.

register

Almost always pronounced shé. The second reading yí appears only in the classical compound 委蛇 (wēiyí, winding/yielding), best known from the idiom 虚与委蛇 (xūyǔwēiyí, to go through the motions of cooperation). You will rarely meet yí outside that fixed phrase.

Components

radical

虫 chóng

insect; creeping creature

Insect radical on the left - also 蛇's indexing radical (Kangxi #142). In classical use 虫 covered any small creeping creature (insect, reptile, worm), so it sits naturally with snakes. Same radical in 蚊 (mosquito), 蜘 (spider), 蜂 (bee), 蝶 (butterfly), 蜥 (lizard) - the entire creepy-crawly family.

phonetic

它 tā

it; (originally) snake-pictograph

Right side 它 supplies the sound: tā → shé via Old Chinese drift. Crucially 它 itself was the original character for 'snake' - a curled-tail pictograph - before being borrowed for the pronoun 'it.' When the snake meaning needed re-marking, 虫 was added on the left and 蛇 was born. So 它 is both phonetic AND the historical semantic core.