田 | tián

In Mandarin Chinese, 田 (Pinyin: tián 🔊) is a noun that means “field”, “paddy” or “farmland”. 田 “is one of the 1000 most commonly used words” in the Collins Chinese Dictionary. Some compound words of 田 include

• 水 + 田 = 水田 (shuǐtián): rice paddy
• 油 + 田 = 油田 (yóutián): oil field
• 山 + 田 = 山田 (shāntián): archaic term for low-quality farmland. In Japanese, 山 (yama) + 田 (ta) is a stereotypical family name Yamada (as in My Neighbors the Yamadas)
• 田 + 鼠 = 田鼠 (tiánshǔ): vole
• 田 + 鸡 = 田鸡 (tiánjī): frog; more specifically, the Chinese edible frog (Hoplobatrachus rugulosus), called “chicken of the field” due to the similarity in taste

As a radical, 田 is found in many hanzi. We’ve seen it in 苗 “seedling” (grass emerging from a field), 男 “man” (working the field used to be a man’s job) and 黄 “yellow” (presumably, colour of earth).

More photos related to fields and sea glass @ Shutterstock.

苗 | miáo

In Mandarin Chinese, 苗 (Pinyin: miáo 🔊) is a noun that means “seedling”, “sprout”, “young” (of an animal), “descendant”, “offspring” and so on. Some compound words of 苗 include

• 苗 + 木 = 苗木 (miáomù): young tree, sapling
• 苗 + 子 = 苗子 (miáozi): a talented child, “budding”, “in the making”
• 火 + 苗 = 火苗 (huǒmiáo): tongue of flame

According to Wiktionary, 苗 is an ideogrammic compound of 艹 “grass” and 田 “field”. But what it has to do with 猫, “cat”? The origin of the word 猫 (māo) is purely onomatopoetic: the cat is an animal that meows 🔊. Likewise, the word for this very sound, 喵 (miāo), “meow”, is a phono-semantic compound of semantic 口 “mouth” and phonetic 苗.

More photos related to sprouts, shoots, seedlings and sea glass @ Shutterstock.