Example sentences
bēi杯zi子pò破le了。
The cup is broken.
zhè这shì是shuí谁de的bēi杯zi子？
Whose cup is this?
About this word
杯 is the container itself, 子 is a noun-forming suffix with a light, everyday feel. The suffix shows up all over household vocabulary: 桌子 table, 椅子 chair, 瓶子 bottle, 盘子 plate, 房子 house, 筷子 chopsticks. The 子 here is neutral tone, a quick swallowed zi, never the full zǐ it carries in 儿子. So 杯子 is roughly "the cup thing", and the suffix contributes no meaning of its own. Learn the pattern once and a few dozen object words become readable at sight.
The story behind the character
杯
杯 is 木 (wood) plus 不, which is there only for the sound. A wooden cup. That wood radical records what cups were made of before glass and porcelain, and the older way of writing the character, 桮, kept the same wooden half. The cup you drink your tea from is a piece of wood with a borrowed sound attached.
子
子 is a newborn drawn from life. Big head, arms stretched out, legs swaddled together. The oldest forms are exactly that, and Xu Shen simply marked it 象形, a picture. It is also the first of the twelve earthly branches, the one paired with the rat, which is why the character shows up on old calendars and in the zodiac.