Learn Chinese Characters 137 腰

by Caren Zuo

腰 (yāo)

腰 = 月 （a semantic part related to meat）+
        要 （a phonetic and semantic part meaning waist ）

We have learned that the character “要” was originally created to refer to “waist”, which was later replaced by a new-created character “腰”. It is obviously a xingshengzi. However, how does the character “月” (meaning moon) has something to do with the parts of a man's body?

Actually here the left part “月” is an transformation of another character “肉”，which means “meet”. Therefore, you will meet many Chinese characters about man's parts of bodies have the radical “月”.

A test: Find the part that have something to do with “meat”.
背 胳 膊  腿 脚 脸 脖 膝