Chinese mnemonics and annotator
Matthews
Compositions
Explanation of characters by Herbert A. Giles
| 要 |
Yao is composed of an obsolete character representing the two hands as radical, and 交 chiao to interlace, originally a picture of crossed legs, as phonetic. The whole is a picture of a man standing with his arms akimbo, and meant waist, now written 腰 with 肉 jou flesh as radical: hence necessary, important, to need, etc. Read yao1 it means to meet, to intercept, to make an agreement, etc. |
Chinese-English (CC-CEDICT)
要
yāo
to demand/to request/to coerce
要
yào
important/vital/to want/to ask for/will/going to (as future auxiliary)/may/must/(used in a comparison) must be/probably/if
Phrases ending with the given character
一yī
定dìng
要yào
must
不bù
必bì
要yào
needless/unnecessary
非fēi
必bì
要yào
inessential/unnecessary