韭

韮

jiǔ

一 + 非

Definitions

jiǔ leek

jiǔ variant of 韭[jiǔ]

Etymology

Depicts chives growing from the ground.

About

韭 (jiǔ) is a pictographic character that originally depicted garlic chives, also called Chinese chives, a perennial herbaceous plant common in East Asian cooking. Its form illustrates chives growing from the ground: a bottom horizontal stroke for the earth, and the vertical and branching strokes above representing the slender, flat leaves sprouting upward in a dense cluster. Unlike most characters, 韭 is not composed of semantic and phonetic elements but stands alone as an independent radical in traditional classification. Today it refers exclusively to this allium species, as in 韭菜 (jiǔcài).