Origin

The character 猫 combines the animal radical on the left, which shows this is a word about a living creature, with a sound component on the right that hints at the pronunciation. The sound component 苗 (pronounced byou or myo) gives you a clue to how the character is read aloud. Together, these two parts—the meaning hint and the pronunciation hint—form the character for cat. This two-part system is very efficient: the left side tells you the category of what you're reading about, while the right side helps you say it correctly.

AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).