手臂

shǒu bì

HSK 3.0 Level 6 Noun Common

Definitions

1 item

leg

腿 means leg, forming a common body-part pair with 手臂 (arm).

1 item

arm

手臂 is more formal or literary; 胳膊 is colloquial, more common in spoken Mandarin.

2 items

arm

臂 is a bound morpheme appearing in compounds like 臂力 (arm strength); 手臂 is the full disyllabic word.

upper limb

上肢 refers to the upper limbs in anatomical context, including arms.

Do not use 手臂 as a measure word; unlike English 'arm', it does not quantify lengths or objects.

手臂 is often used in formal or written contexts; in everyday speech, 胳膊 is preferred for the arm.

1 shown

他伸出手臂。

He stretched out his arm.

AI-generated examples are marked with this icon.

hand

arm