牛
うし · ushi · JLPT N3 · noun
cattle
🐄🐂 ushi sounds like moo-shi: a cow's moo with the M dropped
牛 began as an ox-head pictograph: the top strokes are the horns. In Chinese it is read niú, while ushi is the native Japanese reading. It also appears in 牛肉 (gyūniku, beef), where 肉 means meat.
牛 — pictograph of an ox head with horns
牛 is a pictograph that originally depicted the head of an ox or cow, with the top strokes representing the curved horns and the vertical line the face. Early oracle bone forms show the horns clearly. The meaning has remained stable for over three thousand years: cattle, ox, or cow.