目 is a horizontal eye in oracle bone form — pupil, eyelid, and outer rim drawn flat. Later scribes rotated it 90° vertical to fit the standardizing column-grid of the seal script, giving the upright shape used today. Identical across 繁體 / 新字体 / 简体.

As a radical, 目 marks anything seen, watched, or evaluated: 看 (to look — a hand shielding the eye), 見 (to see), 直 (straight — the eye sees true), 真 (truth/real), 相 (mutual / phase — eye facing tree), 眠 (sleep — eye + people), 督 (supervise — eye scrutinizing), 盲 (blind — eye lost), 自 (self — originally a nose, but visually a stretched eye). When you see 目 inside a character, expect vision, observation, or assessment.

Mandarin: mù, falling 4th tone. 目 alone feels formal in modern Chinese; everyday "eye" is 眼睛 (yǎnjing). But 目 dominates compound vocabulary: 目标 (mùbiāo, goal/target), 目录 (mùlù, table of contents), 题目 (tímù, topic/question), 节目 (jiémù, program/show), 引人注目 (yǐn rén zhù mù, "to attract attention"), 一目了然 (yī mù liǎo rán, "clear at a single glance").

Japanese: on-reading モク (moku) in 注目 (chūmoku, attention), 目的 (mokuteki, purpose), 目次 (mokuji, table of contents). Less common ボク (boku) in 面目 (menboku, face/honor). The kun-reading め (me) is the everyday word — 目 (me, eye), 目薬 (megusuri, eyedrops), 目覚まし (mezamashi, alarm clock — "eye-waker"), and ordinal counter for items in sequence (一つ目, "the first one").

Memory aid: rotated 90° from a horizontal eye. The two interior strokes are pupil and rim.