Chinese Character Wiki
操

cāo, cào

grasp, control

Phonosemantic compound. 扌 represents the meaning and 喿 represents the sound. Simplified form of 撡.

Components
扌 meaning component

扌  Meaning component

shou, shǒu

  

hand

扌 is a component form of 手.

喿 sound component

喿  Sound component

zào, sào

  

chirping of birds

Evolution

操 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

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

Clerical script

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

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

操  

cāo

conduct, run, control, manage; to grasp; to hold; to operate; to manage; to control; to steer; to exercise; to drill (practice); to play; to speak (a language)

操  

cào

variant of 肏[cào]

操 (撡) 

cāo

old variant of 操[cāo]

Most common words with 操
Freq.
Word
Meaning

操

to grasp

操作

to work

操纵

to operate

操心

to worry about

体操

gymnastic

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*[tsʰ]ˤawʔ

tshawX

cāo

grasp (v.)

*[tsʰ]ˤawʔ-s

tshawH

cāo

(what is grasped:) principles


Statistics

HSK level 4

Appears in 34.3905% of movies

893rd most common character in movies

1173rd most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

16

Unicode

U+64CD

Shuowen

“操，把持也。从手，喿聲。”


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