Lesson 16 · Foundational Components

Food, Rice: 食 / 米

Two components behind every menu you'll ever read. 食 means "to eat" or "food" on its own, and like 言→讠 from Lesson 12, it contracts into a narrower left-side form, 饣, whenever it partners with another piece. 米 is the grain itself — rice, uncooked and hulled — and pairs directly with 食's contracted form to build the single most common menu item in China.

Your two new components

食
饣 (left side)
shí
to eat; food, meal
9 strokes
米
 
mǐ
(uncooked, hulled) rice; also the modern unit "meter"
6 strokes

Quick recall — click each card to flip it:

食 / 饣
shí — to eat; food, meal
米
mǐ — rice; meter
食 is an ideogrammic compound: a mouth over a bowl of rice. Wiktionary describes 食 as combining 亼 (jí — no standard modern reading on its own; an ancient form of 集, jí, "to gather," here read as an inverted mouth) over 皀 (jí, "a bowl of food" — a pictogram of a bowl of rice on a stand). In modern print that rice-bowl piece has flattened into a shape resembling 良 (liáng, "good, fine" —), but it isn't 良; it's a separate, older element. Kangxi radical 184. (Wiktionary: 食)
食 becomes 饣 on the left side of a character. The same pattern as 人→亻 and 水→氵 in Lesson 1, 金→钅 in Lesson 10, 手→扌 and 心→忄 in Lesson 11, and 言→讠 in Lesson 12: same meaning, same component, a different shape reserved for the left-side slot. In everyday text you will meet 饣 far more often than the full 食.
米 is a pictograph of rice kernels. Wiktionary describes it as a picture of loose rice grains, with the horizontal stroke through the middle read by some scholars as a sieve used to separate the grains from their husks — distinguishing 米 (husked) from the visually unrelated but semantically paired 粟 (sù, "rice/millet in the husk" —). Kangxi radical 119. (Wiktionary: 米)
米 also means "meter." Beyond the food sense, 米 is the standard modern Chinese word for the metric unit of length — confirmed by MDBG's dictionary entry. One character, two unrelated modern meanings: you'll meet both on menus and on signage (heights, distances, room dimensions).
米 vs 木: look closely. 米 is easy to mistake for 木 (mù, "tree, wood," Lesson 1) at a glance — 米 contains 木's entire four-stroke frame (crossbar, vertical, and the two lower diagonals) unchanged. The difference is two extra short strokes sitting above the crossbar, one dot on each side, where 木 has nothing — the scattered grains this pictograph is named for. Wiktionary is explicit that despite the resemblance, the two characters are historically unrelated — it's a lookalike, not a shared origin. (Wiktionary: 米)

Stroke order

食 — 9 strokes

Stroke order diagram for 食, 9 strokes
食 — 9 strokes
▶ watch animated

饣 — 3 strokes

Stroke order diagram for 饣, 3 strokes
饣 — 3 strokes
▶ watch animated

米 — 6 strokes

Stroke order diagram for 米, 6 strokes
米 — 6 strokes
▶ watch animated

Examples using these components

饭 pairs 饣 with a phonetic partner, the same pattern as 说 (shuō, "to speak"), 请 (qǐng, "please"), and 谢 (xiè, "to thank") in Lesson 12:

饭fàncooked rice; a meal

饣+反=饭

饣 is the semantic element; 反 (fǎn, "to turn over, to reverse" today) is phonetic only, named for accuracy and not entering the component pool. (Wiktionary: 饭)

饮 follows the same pattern:

饮yǐnto drink

饣+欠=饮

饣 is the semantic element; 欠 (qiàn, "to lack, to owe" today, pictured as a kneeling person with an open mouth) is a contributory phonetic-adjacent element, named for accuracy and not entering the component pool. (Wiktionary: 饮)

米 builds a phono-semantic compound of its own:

粉fěnpowder, flour; rice noodles, vermicelli

米+分=粉

米 ("rice," semantic — the earliest sense was rice powder, i.e. face powder) is semantic; 分 (fēn, "to divide, to separate" today) is phonetic only, named for accuracy and not entering the component pool. (Wiktionary: 粉)

米 and 饭 combine directly:

米饭mǐfàncooked rice

米+饭=米饭

米 ("rice," the raw grain) + 饭 ("cooked rice, a meal," above) — literally "rice-meal." (Wiktionary: 米饭)

Stroke order for today's characters

饭 — 7 strokes

Stroke order diagram for 饭, 7 strokes
饭 — 7 strokes
▶ watch animated

饮 — 7 strokes

Stroke order diagram for 饮, 7 strokes
饮 — 7 strokes
▶ watch animated

粉 — 10 strokes

Stroke order diagram for 粉, 10 strokes
粉 — 10 strokes
▶ watch animated

Check your recall

食 combines a mouth over:

饮 (yǐn) means:

In 饭 (饣+反), 反 functions as:

米 is a pictograph of:

Besides "rice," 米 is also the modern Chinese word for:

米饭 (mǐfàn) means:

Compared to 木 (tree), 米 (rice) adds:

Go further

Etymology sources for every character above are linked inline. For the rigorous version of any of them, see the Outlier Dictionary of Chinese Characters.

Out in the world: 米饭 is the single most common menu item in China, and 炒饭 (chǎofàn, "fried rice" — 炒, chǎo, "to stir-fry,") is right behind it. 饮料 (yǐnliào, "beverage" — 料, liào, "material,") labels the drinks section of every menu, and 吃饭 (chīfàn, literally "eat-rice," meaning simply "to eat a meal" — 吃, chī, "to eat,") is one of the most common verbs in spoken and written Chinese alike. 米粉 (mǐfěn, "rice noodles") is on menus across southern China, built directly from today's characters. 玉米 (yùmǐ, "corn, maize" — 玉, yù, "jade,") is a common ingredient name, and on signage 米 shows up as the unit itself — a height-restriction sign reading 限高2米 (xiàn gāo èr mǐ, "height limit 2 meters" — 限, xiàn, "to limit," and 高, gāo, "tall, high,") uses the number-plus-米 pattern you can now read the second half of.