How to Write 蛐 (qū) — Meaning “cricket”

Imagine a cricket (虫) sitting inside a curved musical note (曲), because crickets make a curved, chirping sound. The shape of 曲 also looks like a cricket's bent legs or the curve of its back.

Write the left radical 虫 first (6 strokes), then the right side 曲 (6 strokes). A common mistake is to write the right part 曲 with too few inner strokes – make sure there are two horizontal lines inside the box, not one or three. The left side should be slightly narrower than the right.

蛐 (cricket) has the right part 曲, while 蚊 (mosquito) has 文 and 蚋 (gnat) has 内. The right components look different: 曲 is a box with two inner lines, 文 is a cross shape, and 内 is a box with a person inside. Each character refers to a different insect.

蛐 is rarely used alone but often appears in the word 蛐蛐 (cricket) and the phrase 斗蛐蛐 (cricket fighting), a traditional Chinese game. It is also used in the onomatopoeic expression 蛐蛐叫 (crickets chirping) to describe the insect's sound. This character is not part of the HSK vocabulary and is mainly found in folk culture or nature descriptions.

Common words containing 蛐 include: 蛐蛐 (qū qū) — cricket; 蛐蛐叫 (qū qū jiào) — crickets chirping; 斗蛐蛐 (dòu qū qū) — Cricket fighting.