髒 meaning and stroke order
Organs, viscera; dirty, filthy
How to write 髒, stroke by stroke
23 strokes in order. Each box adds the next stroke in red. Write top to bottom and left to right, and finish enclosing strokes last.
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Meaning of 髒
Definitions from CC-CEDICT, grouped by pronunciation.
- dirty
- filthy
- to get (sth) dirty
How 髒 is built
Phono-semantic (sound + meaning) character. Bone.
骨 gives the meaning and 葬 hints at the sound.
Radical: 骨 (bone), shared by 21 characters on this site.
How to remember 髒
髒 combines 骨 (bone) on the left with 葬 (zàng, to bury) on the right as the sound part. Picture bones dug up from a burial, covered in dirt, and you get dirty, filthy.
In everyday speech this character means dirty and is read zāng. It appears in words like 肮脏 (āngzāng, filthy), 弄脏 (nòngzāng, to make dirty) and 脏话 (zānghuà, swear words). Example: 你的鞋子很髒。 (Nǐ de xiézi hěn zāng.) Your shoes are very dirty.
Common mistake: Learners often say zàng with a falling tone when they mean dirty. For dirty, use first tone zāng, as in 脏兮兮 (zāngxīxī). The falling tone zàng is the organs reading, which in traditional writing is usually 臟 with 月 on the left, not 髒 with 骨.
Common words with 髒
Ordered by HSK level, then by how often they appear in everyday Chinese.
Questions about 髒
How many strokes are in 髒?
髒 is written with 23 strokes. The diagrams on this page number every stroke in the order it is written, with the new stroke shown in red.
What does 髒 mean?
髒 (zàng) means organs, viscera; dirty, filthy. A common word with it is 肮脏 (āngzāng), meaning "dirty; filthy; despicable".
How do you pronounce 髒?
髒 is pronounced zàng, in the fourth tone (falling).
What is the radical of 髒?
The radical of 髒 is 骨, which carries the idea of "bone". Dictionaries list 髒 under this radical.
What is the simplified form of 髒?
髒 is a traditional character. Its simplified form is 脏, used in mainland China and Singapore.
Why do the common words use 脏 instead of 髒?
脏 is the simplified way of writing this word, used in mainland China. 髒 is the form you will see in Taiwan and Hong Kong. In mainland writing, 脏 stands for both dirty (zāng) and organs (zàng).
How do I say someone uses dirty language?
Use 说脏话 (shuō zānghuà), to swear or use foul language. For example, 别说脏话 (bié shuō zānghuà) means do not swear.