gài
noun HSK 7-9 #12,469

Meanings

  1. 1 calcium

Examples

HSK 3
Lǎoniánrén xūyào duō bǔ gài.
Elderly people need to supplement more calcium.
HSK 4
Niúnǎi hányǒu fēngfù de gài.
Milk is rich in calcium.

Tips

memory
The radical on the left indicates it's a metal/element. on the right gives the pronunciation. Common collocations: 补钙 (supplement calcium), 缺钙 (calcium deficiency).

Components

radical
jīn
metal; gold (radical form)
Left metal radical (the side-form of ) - the indexing radical, marking as one of the modern element characters coined for the chemistry lexicon. Same radical builds iron, copper, zinc, sodium. Whenever a Chinese term names a metallic element, expect anchoring the left.
phonetic
gài
beggar
Right supplies the sound gài - an exact match with no drift, chosen precisely to match the Latin calcium. The beggar sense plays no part in the meaning; + is a purely modern, sound-driven coinage of the late Qing / early Republican chemistry vocabulary.

Stroke Order

gài