咀 emphasizes the act of chewing food in the mouth.

Related characters:
嚼 — to chew; grind with teeth


meal, food, rice, to eat

 — to eat
噛 — to bite

The compound 咀嚼 is widely used in East Asian languages both literally (to chew) and figuratively (to reflect deeply on something).

mouth, opening, orifice

 (mouth) — semantic component, indicates an action performed with the mouth, leading to the meaning “to chew.”
且 — phonetic component supplying the sound (저 / jǔ).

Semantic development:
- to chew food;
- to grind food with the teeth;
- figuratively: to ponder or process something carefully.
Thus the meaning expanded from physical chewing to mental digestion of ideas.

Characters

Words

Vocabulary

to announce, to inform, to tell, to report, to accuse, to sue (in legal contexts)

all around, complete, thorough

to pray, to invoke, to curse, incantation

taste

to scold, to reproach, to exhale, to blow air

to groan, to moan, to murmur

to call, to cry out, to shout, to exhale, breathe out

life, fate, destiny

to chew, to bite

to spit, to spit out

harmony, peace

to instruct, to tell, to blow

all, entirely, wholly, without exception

throat, pharynx, to swallow, to choke

to be sad, sorrowful, pitiable

goods, product, item, quality, grade, class

to drink, to exhale or inhale, to open the mouth and laugh

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Chinese character

Explore 214 Chinese radicals and their derived characters. Sort by radical or stroke count, and view the complete list of official Hanja radicals.

Chinese characters (Hanja)

Chinese characters dictionary

咀

Etymology

Usage in Korean

Additional notes

Words that derived from 咀

Neighboring characters in the dictionary