菜 (cài) means "vegetable, dish" with 11 strokes, radical 艹 (grass), HSK 1 on the new exam.
Pronunciation
Meaning
Primary: vegetable
Other meanings:
- dish
Etymology
Oracle-bone origin
菜 is a phono-semantic compound with no oracle bone attestation. The top 艹 (grass) marks it as a plant, and the lower 采 (to pick, pluck) supplies both the sound cài and a semantic hint: a vegetable is something you pick. 采 itself is a pictograph of a hand 爪 reaching down into a tree 木 to gather fruit or leaves.
Form evolution
采 appears in oracle bone script as a hand over a plant. The compound 菜 is first seen in seal script, with 艹 written as two 屮 shapes on top. Clerical script flattened the grass radical to the four-stroke form, and modern regular script further reduced it to three strokes, giving the current 菜.
How the meaning evolved
Originally 菜 meant wild greens gathered for food, as opposed to cultivated grain. By the Han it covered cultivated vegetables as well, then broadened to mean any dish served with rice, including meat and fish dishes in compounds like 做菜 (cook a meal) and 川菜 (Sichuan cuisine). In internet slang 菜 also means unskilled, from the idea of being soft or raw.
Cultural note
The phrase 吃菜 literally means eat vegetables but in practice means eat the non-rice dishes at a meal, which trips up beginners who expect it to mean vegetarian eating. The slang 你太菜了 (you're too noob) is now common in gaming contexts and shows how a food word became a personality judgement.
Mnemonic
Grass that is picked — vegetables
Decomposition
Breaking a character into its components makes it far easier to recall. Each component above links to its own detail page.
Basic info
| Pinyin | cài |
| Meanings | vegetable, dish |
| Stroke count | 11 strokes |
| Radical | 艹 (#140: grass) |
| New HSK exam | Recognise at HSK 1 |
| Frequency | #239 most common |
Example sentences
Words containing 菜
Related characters
On the new HSK 1 exam
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Frequently Asked Questions
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Reviewed by RJ Murray, Founder, HSK Lord.