The Chinese character 月

And its component form

yuè

  1. moon
  2. month

The Chinese character looks like a crescent moon. Can you see the resemblance?

月 is both a character and a character component


Everything you need to know about the Chinese character component 火 fire in an easily downloadable and sharable image

月 can be used as a meaning component in a Chinese character. You’ll find 月 in characters and words related to body parts.

These characters all contain 月:

liǎn

face

féi

fat

wèi

stomach

flesh; muscle

The character component 月  can also be found in word that are not related to body parts.

The component 月 can also be found in characters related to the moon, which is logical. But it can also be used in characters that have nothing to do with the body parts or moon.

Exceptions

You can find the character component 月  used in words related to the moon like in:

míng: bright

wàng: full moon; to hope

qī: a period of time; phase

You can find the character component 月 used in other words like:

yǒu: to have; there is; there are

: clothes, dress, garment

néng: to be able to; ability

You’ll also find the meaning component 月 in many other Chinese characters. Browse the full list here.

All 80,000+ Chinese characters share the same character components. Chinese character components are therefore essential for Chinese learners: they are the building blocks of Chinese. Character character components help tremendously with understanding a character: they provide information on its meaning or on its pronunciation. In short, knowing character components will help you analyse, learn and remember each Chinese character much better.

Join us on Ninchanese as we teach you everything about the Chinese character components you need to know, little by little.

Related: Explore the key character components to know one by one, with this selection of meaning components and phonetic components.

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NinchaneseChinese Character Component 月 moon (meaning)