拼音
- yào (fourth tone, falling)
medicine, a drug; a herbal remedy; a chemical preparation
字形拆解
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.