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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

炒

chǎo
to stir fry; to sauté
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 6
  • TOCFL 4
  • radical 火
  • 8 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *sʰroːʔ): semantic 火 + phonetic 少 (OC *hmjewʔ, *hmjews).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese火 “fire; flame (Classifier: 把 m; 團／团 m)”
  • soundChinese少 “few; little in number; less; not many”

Meanings

character
  1. to stir fry; to sauté
  2. to sack; to fire (short for 炒魷魚 /炒鱿鱼 (chǎo yóuyú))
  3. to speculate in
  4. to crash
  5. to perform badly (in a test or exam)
  6. to win (someone)

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 置少量的油於鍋內加熱後，放入食物並不斷翻攪的烹飪方法。 例：炒飯、炒三鮮、炒肉絲
  2. 刻意的運用一些手段、方法來達成某種效果。 例：炒地皮、炒股票、炒新聞

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

How 炒 was written 字形演變

  1. 炒 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 炒 in Regular script
    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
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 炒