Etymology data from Wiktionary via Wiktextract (CC BY-SA 4.0). Chinese character data from the 說文解字, the Taiwan MOE 國語辭典簡編本 (CC BY-ND 3.0 TW) and HSK/TOCFL lists.

Explanations are written by a local model (gemma4) and only published after a verification pass against the cited sources. How it works.

Chinese

吐

tǔ

to spit; to spew from the mouth

Phono-semantic compound 形聲
HSK 5
TOCFL 6
radical 口
6 strokes

Etymology graph

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *l̥ʰaːʔ, *l̥ʰaːs): semantic 口 (“mouth”) + phonetic 土 (OC *l̥ʰaːʔ, *l'aːʔ).

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *taq (“to spit”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*taq “to spit”
meaningChinese口 “mouth, especially the lips and internal mouth cavity (Classifier: 把 c)”
soundChinese土 “earth; soil”

Meanings

character

to spit; to spew from the mouth
to say; to tell; to pour out
to sprout or emerge; to bud or flower
to protrude; to stick out
as much as
a surname

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

吐：寫也。从口土聲。

Xu Shen, c. 100 CE — the first analytical dictionary of Chinese characters.

國語辭典 definitions

腹中或胸中物自口湧出的現象。例：嘔吐、吐血、上吐下瀉　◎
交出。例：吐出贓款

© Ministry of Education, Taiwan — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW, shown unaltered.

How 吐 was written 字形演變

Small seal
說文小篆
Shuowen, c. 100 CE
Regular
楷書
since c. 200 CE

Historical forms collected by the legacy etymfun dataset; most characters have several attested variants.

Sources

Historical glyph forms (zdic.net 字形演变) — Rights unverified
HSK / TOCFL word lists — Facts (levels)
教育部《國語辭典簡編本》 (Taiwan MOE) — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW
說文解字 Shuowen Jiezi (Xu Shen, c. 100 CE) — Public domain
Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
Wiktionary: 吐