Meaning of 肉
Definitions from CC-CEDICT.
- meat
- flesh
- pulp (of a fruit)
- (coll.) (of a fruit) squashy
- (of a person) flabby
- irresolute
- Kangxi radical 130
How to use 肉
肉 on its own means meat in general, and it combines with an animal name to name specific meats, like 牛肉 (niúròu) beef, 猪肉 (zhūròu) pork and 鸡肉 (jīròu) chicken. In everyday talk in many parts of China, plain 肉 often defaults to pork. Example: 我不吃肉。(Wǒ bù chī ròu.) I don't eat meat.
肉 (ròu) looks like a slab of meat on a butcher's block: the outer frame is the cut piece, and the two 人-like marks inside are the lines of fat and muscle. Picture a cross-section of a steak and you have the character.
Common mistake: Learners often write the two inner strokes as a single 人 or let them stop short; in 肉 there are two stacked 人 shapes, and the top one pokes out above the frame. Also note that 肌肉 (jīròu, muscle) and 鸡肉 (jīròu, chicken meat) sound the same, so watch the first character when reading or typing.
肉 in example sentences
Real sentences from the Tatoeba project, with pinyin and English.
Stroke order for each character
Open a character for its meaning, components and more words.
肉 ròu · meat · 6 strokes
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
Related words
Words that share a character with 肉.
| 肌肉 | jīròu | muscle; flesh |
| 烤肉 | kǎoròu | to barbecue meat; to roast meat; barbecued meat; roast meat |
| 牛肉 | niúròu | beef |
| 鸡肉 | jīròu | chicken meat |
| 肉体 | ròutǐ | physical body |
| 猪肉 | zhūròu | pork |
| 行尸走肉 | xíngshīzǒuròu | walking corpse (idiom); zombie |
| 羊肉 | yángròu | mutton; goat meat |
| 肉桂 | ròuguì | Chinese cinnamon (Cinnamomum cassia) |
| 肉类 | ròulèi | meat |
| 骨肉 | gǔròu | blood relation; kin |
| 肉眼 | ròuyǎn | naked eye; layman's eyes |
Questions about 肉
What does 肉 mean?
肉 (ròu) means "meat; flesh" and is used as a noun.
How do you write 肉?
肉 is made of 1 character: 肉 (6 strokes). That is 6 strokes in total.
Is 肉 an HSK word?
Yes. 肉 is on the HSK 1 vocabulary list of the HSK 3.0 standard.
Why do so many body-part characters like 肚, 肺 and 脸 have 月 on the left?
When 肉 appears as a left-side component, it is squeezed into a shape that looks like 月 (moon). In characters about the body, such as 肚 (dù, belly) and 脸 (liǎn, face), that 月 is really 肉, meaning flesh.
Can 肉 describe a person or fruit, not just meat?
Yes. In casual speech 肉 can mean the soft pulp of a fruit, and it can describe a fruit as mushy or a person as flabby or slow and indecisive. For example, someone might say a person is 很肉 to mean they dither and take forever to act.