Chinese Character Wiki
討

tǎo

to discuss

Original meaning: 

manage, govern

Depicts using speech (言) and one's hands (寸) to manage or govern. The meaning later shifted to "discuss" and "ask for".

Components
言 meaning component

言  Meaning component

yán

  

speech

寸 meaning component

寸  Meaning component

cùn

  

(hand), inch

Depicts a hand.

Evolution

討 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
討 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
討 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

讨 (討) 

tǎo

to discuss; ask for, beg; demand; dun; marry; to invite; to provoke; to demand or ask for; to send armed forces to suppress; to denounce or condemn; to marry (a woman); to discuss or study

Most common words with 討
Freq.
Word
Meaning

讨厌

to dislike

讨论

to discuss

探讨

to probe

讨

to invite

研讨会

seminar

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*[t]ʰˤuʔ

thawX

tǎo

examine; denounce


Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 66.5065% of movies

632nd most common character in movies

833rd most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

10

Simplified

讨

Unicode

U+8A0E

Shuowen

“討，治也。从言，从寸。”


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Creative Commons License