HSK Guide

药藥 yào — medicine, a drug; a herbal remedy; a chemical preparation

yào (fourth tone, falling)

Traditional: 藥

medicine, a drug; a herbal remedy; a chemical preparation

9 strokesRadical 艸Frequency #433
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Pinyin

  • yào (fourth tone, falling)

medicine, a drug; a herbal remedy; a chemical preparation

Character breakdown

Ideographic description

⿱艹约The sequence reads left to right and describes how the parts are arranged.

  • 艹meaning partno entry yetThe grass radical: medicines were plants first and everything else afterwards.
  • 约sound partno entry yet约 yuē for the sound. The traditional 藥 carries 樂 lè / yuè in this position; simplification replaced it with the shorter homophone.

Mnemonic

Herbs 艹 over 约 for the sound. Note the verb the language chooses: medicine is eaten, not taken — 吃药 — and that pairing is fixed, so 喝药 sounds wrong for a tablet. 中药 is Chinese herbal medicine, 西药 the Western sort, and 药店 the shop that sells either.

A memory aid written by HSK Guide editors. It is not an etymology and does not describe the historical origin of the character.

Words containing 药

Radical 艸 — other characters