In Mandarin Chinese, 草 (Pinyin: cǎo 🔊) is a noun that means “grass”, “straw”, “thatch”, “herb”; by extension, any green plant without bark (or, to use Baldrick’s method of defining things, “not a tree”); “draft”, “sketch” (the scribble that looks like grass?). It also has acquired an euphemistic meaning of the similarly-pronounced vulgar word 肏 (cào).
According to Wiktionary, 草 is a
Phono-semantic compound: semantic 艸 (“grass; plant”) + phonetic 早. Originally referred to 皂, and later borrowed for the “grass” sense, replacing 艸.
艹 is a radical form of 艸. We’ve seen it before in such characters as 茶 “tea” and 花 “flower”.
More photos related to grass, herbs, straw and sea glass @ Shutterstock.
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