Internal organs

臟 names the body's internal organs in Chinese. It appears in medical and classical compounds; in simplified Chinese, 脏 can also mean “dirty,” so the surrounding words settle the sense.

Text symbol

What 臟 means

It names the body's internal organs. In traditional Chinese medicine, 五臟 is the category of five solid organs, while 臟腑 groups them with the hollow 腑 organs.

Classical Chinese records use 藏 for the organ sense, and dictionaries link 臧 with that spelling. In 臟, the left flesh component points to the body; the right side is 藏. The Shuowen record, an early Chinese character dictionary, does not list 臟.

Technical, anatomical, or literary in Chinese; not a casual message by default.

Is 臟 dirty? No. In simplified Chinese, 脏 can mean organs or dirty; context decides.

Who writes 臟

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Don't confuse it with

脏

CJK Unified Ideograph-810F

In simplified Chinese, 脏 can stand for 臟 (organs) or 髒 (dirty); context distinguishes them.

髒

CJK Unified Ideograph-9Ad2

Traditional Chinese form for dirty; it is distinct from 臟, the organ character.

臓

CJK Unified Ideograph-81D3

In Japanese standard usage, 臓 is the usual form for the organ word; 臟 is its older form.

Combination ideas

Traditional Chinese medicine's category of five solid organs.

Traditional Chinese medicine's paired categories: solid 臟 organs and hollow 腑 organs.

Questions people ask

Why does 臟 show as a box on some devices?

Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.