肉 — how to write the kanji for “meat”
肉 (“meat”) is a JLPT N4 kanji taught in second grade in Japan. As one of the 214 traditional radicals it heads 217 kanji in KANJIDIC2. On its own it is the word niku, “flesh; meat”. Read niku, it forms 牛肉 (“beef”), 筋肉 (“muscle”) and 肉親 (“blood relationship”); the native reading shishi gives 太り肉 (“corpulent”). Chinese reads it ròu, “meat”, at HSK 2.
- Strokes
- 6
- JLPT
- N4
- Radical
- 肉 (“meat”)
- On
- ニク
- Kun
- しし
Stroke by stroke
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- Vertical ㇑top leftdownwards
- Horizontal-turn-hook ㇆top leftrightwards → downwards
- Left-falling stroke ㇒topdownwards → down and left
- Dot ㇔topdown and right
- Left-falling stroke ㇒centerdown and left
- Dot ㇔centerdown and right
Japanese and Chinese
Japanese and Chinese draw all 6 strokes in the same order and direction, by our stroke-by-stroke comparison.
Trace it
Follow the numbers. Tracing help
Readings
- On (Chinese-derived)
- ニク niku
- Kun (native)
- しし shishi
- Meanings
- meat
- Read niku
- 牛肉 筋肉 肉親 肉体 皮肉 肉体的
- Read shishi
- 太り肉
- School year
- second grade
- Newspaper rank
- 986th of 2,500 (KANJIDIC2)
- Korean hanja
- 육 yuk
- Common words
- 22 in JMdict
Words with 肉
| Word | Reading | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 牛肉 | ぎゅうにく gyuuniku | beef |
| 筋肉 | きんにく kinniku | muscle |
| 肉親 | にくしん nikushin | blood relationship; blood relative |
| 肉体 | にくたい nikutai | the body; the flesh |
| 皮肉 | ひにく hiniku | irony; sarcasm |
| 肉体的 | にくたいてき nikutaiteki | bodily; physical |
| 豚肉 | ぶたにく butaniku | pork |
| 食肉 | しょくにく shokuniku | meat (for consumption) |
| 苦肉の策 | くにくのさく kunikunosaku | last resort; desperate measure taken under the pressure of… |
| 太り肉 | ふとりじし futorijishi | corpulent; fat |
Most common first (JMdict).
Practice sheet
Print at 100%. Several kanji: worksheet maker.
Keep going
JLPT N4, in list order: