母鸡
mǔ jī · HSK 6
hen
🐔 母 (mother) + 鸡 (chicken) = mother chicken, a hen
母 means mother or female. 鸡 means chicken. Put them together and you get the female chicken — a hen. The male counterpart is 公鸡 (gōng jī), where 公 means male.
母 — pictograph of kneeling woman with two breast dots
母 is a pictograph derived from 女 (woman) with two added dots representing breasts, marking a nursing mother. The earliest oracle bone forms show a kneeling figure with prominent dots on the chest. The meaning has stayed remarkably stable, denoting 'mother' and by extension 'female' or 'source/origin'.
鸡 — 又 (hand) + 鸟 (bird), simplified from 雞
Originally written 雞, a phono-semantic compound: 鳥 'bird' gives the meaning, while 奚 supplied the sound. The simplified form 鸡 replaces 奚 with 又 (a hand) as a sign component and uses the simplified bird radical 鸟. The character has always meant 'chicken'.