口腔
koǔ qiāng · HSK 7
oral cavity
👄 口 (mouth) + 腔 (cavity, body chamber) = the oral cavity, the hollow space of the mouth
口 means mouth; 腔 means a body cavity or hollow chamber (same 腔 as in 胸腔 chest cavity). Together they name the inside-the-mouth space. The qiāng sound rhymes with the -ang in many body-chamber words.
口 — pictograph of an open mouth
口 is one of the oldest pictographs in Chinese, originally drawn as a simple outline of an open mouth. Its core meaning 'mouth' extended naturally to 'opening' or 'entrance', as in 入口 (entrance). It also serves as a common radical in characters related to speech, eating, or apertures.
腔 — flesh 月 (肉) + cavity 空
A semantic-phonetic compound. The flesh radical 月 (from 肉) signals a body-related meaning, while 空 (kōng, 'empty/hollow') supplies both the sound and the sense of a hollow space. Together 腔 originally meant a hollow cavity inside the body, later extended to 'tone of voice' and 'manner of speaking.'