Today one of my Chinese contacts asked me the meaning of 月食 (yuèshí). It’s not a word I’ve come across before and I wasn’t able to guess its meaning from the meanings of the individual characters, so I had to look it up. It means ‘lunar eclipse’ and the individual characters mean ‘moon’ and ‘to eat’. I suppose it does look like part of the moon has been eaten during an eclipse. A solar eclipse is 日食 (rìshí).
