阿米巴 (ā mǐ bā) — amoeba | tongtong Chinese Dictionary

Definition

noun

amoeba

Measure word · 只

阿米巴。
Xiǎn wēi jìng xià kě yǐ kàn dào ā mǐ bā zài yí dòng.
Under the microscope, you can see amoebas moving.
阿米巴。
ā mǐ bā Shì yì zhǒng dān xì bāo shēng wù.
An amoeba is a single-celled organism.
阿米巴。
Tā zài shí yàn shì lǐ guān chá ā mǐ bā de xíng zhuàng biàn huà.
He observed the shape changes of amoebas in the laboratory.

Single-morpheme word

构词法gòucífǎ

音译yīnyìTransliteration

The characters spell the sound of a foreign word; their individual meanings play no part.

阿米巴 spells a foreign word for a microscopic organism; the characters carry no meaning of their own here.

Sound-only characters

Most characters — around four in five — are built this way: one part hints at the meaning, the other at the pronunciation.

Meaning part形符xíngfú

阜阜fù

Sound part声符shēngfú

可

The sound has drifted apartThe sound part was a clue two thousand years ago — it often still helps, but not always.

The part 阜 points to a mound, and 可 gives the pronunciation; 阿 originally meant a big mound.

A drawing of the thing itself, worn down over three thousand years into a few strokes.

米 is a picture of rice kernels without husk, with the horizontal stroke as a bamboo sieve. It is unrelated to similar-looking grain characters.

No reliable origin is recorded for this character.