The meat radical 肉

Read ròu, 6 strokes. It indexes 67 distinct HSK characters.

67HSK characters

6Strokes

#130Radical number

肉Glyph

Quick answer

What does the meat radical (肉) mean, and which characters use it?

Meat (肉, ròu) is Kangxi radical 130, and it usually marks a character whose meaning is connected to meat. 67 distinct HSK characters are filed under it, the most common being 能, 胜, 育. When you meet a new character carrying 肉, expect its sense to touch meat and let the other component hint at the sound.

How this radical works inside a character

Most characters built on 肉 follow the meaning-plus-sound pattern: 肉 sits on one side to signal the meat sense, and a second component supplies the approximate pronunciation. So you are rarely memorizing a whole new shape, you are recognizing meat plus a part you may already read. The list below is in corpus-frequency order, so the characters you will actually meet first are at the top: learn them in this order and the rest of the meat-radical family gets easier as you go.

All 67 meat characters 67 characters

#	Char	Pīnyīn	Strokes	HSK 3.0	HSK 2.0
1	能	néng	10	1	1
2	胜	shèng	9	3	5
3	育	yù	8	2	3
4	背	bèi	9	2	5
5	脑	nǎo	10	1	1
6	脱	tuō	11	4	4
7	胆	dǎn	9	5	5
8	胡	hú	9	5	5
9	股	gǔ	8	6	5
10	脸	liǎn	11	2	3
11	肥	féi	8	4	4
12	胸	xiōng	10	4	5
13	腐	fǔ	14	4	5
14	脉	mài	9	7-9	6
15	脚	jiǎo	11	2	3
16	胶	jiāo	10	5	5
17	胎	tāi	9	7-9	6
18	肉	ròu	6	1	2
19	脏	zàng	10	2	4
20	肯	kěn	8	5	4
21	脆	cuì	10	5	5
22	腾	téng	13	7-9	6
23	胖	pàng	9	3	3
24	肠	cháng	7	5	·
25	肩	jiān	8	5	5
26	脾	pí	12	5	4
27	胞	bāo	9	6	6
28	腿	tuǐ	13	2	3
29	肌	jī	6	5	5
30	肤	fū	8	5	4
31	胃	wèi	9	5	5
32	肝	gān	7	6	·
33	肿	zhǒng	8	6	6
34	肢	zhī	8	7-9	6
35	胀	zhàng	8	7-9	·
36	腔	qiāng	12	7-9	6
37	腕	wàn	12	7-9	·
38	腹	fù	13	7-9	6
39	腻	nì	13	7-9	6
40	膀	bǎng	14	7-9	5
41	臂	bì	17	7-9	6
42	肚	dù	7	4	4
43	腰	yāo	13	4	5
44	肺	fèi	8	6	5
45	胁	xié	8	6	5
46	膜	mó	14	6	6
47	肖	xiào	7	7-9	6
48	肪	fáng	8	7-9	6
49	肾	shèn	8	7-9	·
50	胚	pēi	9	7-9	·
51	胧	lóng	9	7-9	·
52	胳	gē	10	7-9	5
53	脂	zhī	10	7-9	6
54	脊	jǐ	10	7-9	·
55	脖	bó	11	7-9	5
56	腊	là	12	7-9	·
57	腥	xīng	13	7-9	6
58	腺	xiàn	13	7-9	·
59	膊	bó	14	7-9	5
60	膏	gāo	14	7-9	4
61	膛	táng	15	7-9	6
62	膝	xī	15	7-9	6
63	膨	péng	16	7-9	·
64	膳	shàn	16	7-9	·
65	臊	sāo	17	7-9	·
66	肴	yáo	8	·	6
67	腮	sāi	13	·	6

tone 1 tone 2 tone 3 tone 4 neutral Order = corpus frequency, most common first · · = not in that scheme

Strokes and radical assignment come from the Unicode Han Database (Unicode 17.0.0, field kRSUnicode); the HSK levels and the frequency order are computed from the shipped HSK word lists. A small number of characters have a contested radical across dictionaries; the primary Unicode analysis is used throughout. Last verified 2026-07-24. See the full radical explorer or the characters-per-level reference.

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Drill the meat-radical characters on a schedule

This list is free to browse and self-test here, always. If you would rather practice recognizing these characters on your phone with spaced repetition, we recommend Wordbrush, our one disclosed pick. Never a gate on this page.

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