鹰 (yīng): eagle

Measure Word

一只鹰 zhī

Meanings

1 eagle
2 hawk
3 falcon

Examples

天上飞着一只鹰。

Tiānshang fēi zhe yī zhī yīng.

An eagle is flying in the sky.

他的眼睛像鹰一样锐利。

Tā de yǎnjing xiàng yīng yīyàng ruìlì.

His eyes are as sharp as an eagle's.

Tips

usage

鹰 is used as a general term for birds of prey. In politics, 鹰派 (yīngpài) means 'hawks' (hardliners), opposite of 鸽派 (gēpài, doves).

Components

radical

鸟 niǎo

bird

Bottom indexing radical 鸟 (simplified from 鳥) — the official classifier. The redundant doubling (隹 inside 倠 plus 鸟 below) is a feature of large bird-of-prey characters in the simplified system. The bird-radical anchors 鹰 firmly in the family of named birds: 鸡, 鸭, 鸽, 鸦.

semantic

广 guǎng

shelter; dotted-cliff radical

Top-left shelter radical 广 — represents the falconer's perch or mews where trained eagles were kept. Hawks were prized hunting companions in ancient China; the shelter component hints at their domesticated, perch-bound side. Not the indexing radical here (that role goes to 鸟 below).

semantic

倠 suī

person + short-tailed bird (semantic)

Inside the shelter sits 倠 — a person 亻 next to a perched bird 隹. The whole image is a falconer with a hawk on the arm, the original meaning of 鹰. Combined with the shelter above and the bird-radical below, the entire glyph spells out hawk-keeping in pictorial form.