肉

It represents animal meat and is an ideograph originally depicting a piece of rib meat that has been cut. It also represents “body,” “muscle (筋肉),” or “flesh/soft tissue.”

The character is a pictogram symbolizing this specific portion of meat.

For human flesh or muscle, the character 肌 is used, but since the Han dynasty, 肉 has also come to mean human muscle. Its meaning has broadened to also refer to the peeled flesh of fruit.

In modern Chinese and Vietnamese (influenced by Chinese), 肉 by itself typically means pork.

To specify other types of meat, the animal's name is placed before 肉, such as 牛 (cow) for beef, 羊 (sheep) for lamb, or 鷄 (chicken) for chicken.

In contrast, in Korea and Japan, 肉 often refers to beef. This difference is due partly to climate and agricultural conditions in China being less suitable for raising large numbers of pigs historically, as well as the influence of Buddhism in medieval Korea and Japan, which discouraged meat consumption. Cattle were more commonly raised for farming, so beef was more frequently eaten.

Historically, the top part of 肉 was sometimes written as 入 (meaning “enter”), influenced by the character 內 (inside), but today it is written as 人 (person).

There is a variant form 宍 (Unicode 5B8D), used mainly in Japan for place names and personal names such as Shishido (宍戸) and Shishido/Shishito (宍道).

When used as a semantic component (radical), it generally indicates meanings related to the body or organs of animals, the growth of bodily fluids, obesity or emaciation, injuries, diseases and bodily changes caused thereby, carnivory, rituals, and meat-based cooking.

The radical often appears in a form that looks like 月 (the "moon" radical), called the "meat moon" (육달월) form. When placed as a "foot" radical (at the bottom), the left stroke is straightened rather than curved, taking the shape ⺝. However, in Taiwan and Hong Kong, to avoid confusion with the actual moon radical 月, this form is written as ⺼, with the left stroke written as a slant when appearing at the foot position.

When 肉 is used as a foot component, it sometimes remains unchanged, as in 腐. The "meat moon" form usually appears as a left-side or bottom radical, but rarely appears on the right side (the "side" or "wall" position), as in 胡.

Due to the transformation of 肉 into the "meat moon" form when used in other characters, some characters that combine 月 + A and 肉 + A with the same stroke order and position become "pseudo pairs", i.e., visually similar but semantically different. Examples include:

朣 (bright moonlight) — 膧 (plump, fleshy)

朦 (dim, hazy) — 䑃 (abundant)

朧 (blurred moonlight) — 𦢫 (plump, fleshy)

In modern Chinese radical classification, the meat moon radical has been abolished and merged into the moon radical 月. Only those characters in the original meat radical group that retain the full 肉 form remain under the meat radical; those where 肉 is simplified to the "meat moon" form are classified under the moon radical.