Chinese Character Wiki
菜

cài

vegetables

Phonosemantic compound. 艹 represents the meaning and 采 represents the sound.

Components
艹 meaning component

艹  Meaning component

cao, cǎo

  

grass

艹 is a component form of 艸.

采 sound component

采  Sound component

cǎi, cài

  

gather, pick

Evolution

菜 Bronze script Mid Western Zhou (~900 BC)

Bronze script

Mid Western Zhou (~900 BC)
菜 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
菜 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
菜 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

菜  

cài

vegetables; dish, order; food; dish (type of food); vegetable; cuisine; CL:盤|盘[pán],道[dào]; (coll.) (one's) type; (of one's skills etc) weak; poor

Most common words with 菜
Freq.
Word
Meaning

菜

vegetable

蔬菜

vegetables

菜单

menu

泡菜

pickled cabbage

饭菜

food

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*s.r̥ˤəʔ-s

tshojH

cài

vegetables


Statistics

HSK level 1

Appears in 30.9146% of movies

1086th most common character in movies

1266th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

11

Unicode

U+83DC

Shuowen

“菜，艸之可食者。从艸，采聲。”


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