凹 (āo) · concave; sunken; dented

Meanings

1 concave; sunken; dented

Characters

凹

āo

concave; sunken; dented

Examples

HSK 7-9

路面上有一个凹下去的坑。

Lùmiàn shàng yǒu yí gè āo xiàqù de kēng.

There's a sunken hole in the road surface.

HSK 7-9

凹凸不平的地面很难走。

Āo tū bùpíng de dìmiàn hěn nán zǒu.

The uneven ground is hard to walk on.

Tips

memory

凹 literally looks like a dent - the character itself is concave in the middle. Its opposite 凸 (tū, 'convex') bulges outward. They're a perfect visual pair.

register

The standard reading is āo (concave). A second reading wā exists only as a variant of 洼 (wā, depression) and survives in personal names - most famously the novelist 贾平凹 (Jiǎ Píngwā), where the family pronounces 凹 as wā.

Components

pictograph

凹 āo

concave; sunken

Pure visual pictograph: the silhouette depicts a concave shape with a notch cut into the top edge. Pairs with mirror-image 凸 (convex), which has a bump sticking up. Indexed under Kangxi #17 凵 (kǎn) by tradition, though no clean 凵-element separates from the rest of the outline.

Filed under radical 凵 (kǎn, #17) by convention. 凵 is not a separate component in 凹, so no strokes are highlighted.