颅

顱
lú
noun #11,277

Meanings

  1. 1 skull
  2. 2 cranium
  3. 3 forehead

Examples

HSK 4
Yīshēng jiǎnchá le tā de lúgǔ.
The doctor examined his skull.
HSK 7-9
Zhège shǒushù xūyào dǎkāi lú qiāng.
This surgery requires opening the cranial cavity.

Tips

usage
颅 rarely appears alone in modern Chinese. Common compounds: 颅骨 (skull bone), 颅腔 (cranial cavity), 头颅 (head/skull).

Components

radical
页 yè
head; page (radical)
Right-side head radical, originally pictured a head set on a body with three lines of hair on top, now flattened into the simplified six-stroke 页. The indexing radical here, supplying the meaning: 颅 names the skull or cranium. The radical anchors 颅 in the head-and-face family along with 顶 crown, 颈 neck, 额 forehead, 颊 cheek.
phonetic
卢 lú
household; black (here phonetic)
Left side 卢 supplies the sound, lú read straight across with no shift. The traditional form 顱 used a much fuller phonetic 盧 above this simplified silhouette; the modern shape compresses to 5 strokes while keeping the same purely phonetic role. Same phonetic appears in 炉 stove, 庐 hut, 芦 reed, all sharing the lú reading.

Stroke Order

颅 lú