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切

qiē / qiè
verb HSK 4 #1,617

Meanings

  1. 1 to cut; to slice
  2. 2 to carve
  3. 3 tangent (math)

Examples

请帮我切一下菜。
Qǐng bāng wǒ qiē yīxià cài.
Please help me cut the vegetables.
把西瓜切成八块。
Bǎ xīguā qiē chéng bā kuài.
Cut the watermelon into eight pieces.
画一条圆的切线。
Huà yī tiáo yuán de qiēxiàn.
Draw a tangent line to the circle.

Tips

usage
qiē is the physical-cutting reading: blade meets object. Use it for kitchen verbs (切菜, 切片, 切丝), surgical and industrial cutting (切除, 切割), the math 'tangent' (切线), and most foreign-name transliterations (切尔诺贝利, 撒切尔). The secondary reading 切 covers abstract 'close / eager / urgent' compounds — see that entry.
memory
Picture the knife 刀 on the right going 切! — onomatopoeia for the chop. Concrete blade = qiē. When the same character means 'pressed close / urgent' it shifts to qiè — no knife sound, just intimate contact.

Components

radical
刀 dāo
knife
Right knife radical — the indexing radical, picturing a curved blade. Marks 切 as a cutting action. Same family as 分, 剪, 划. The figurative readings 'close to, eager' (qiè) come from a blade pressed close against its target — intimate contact, which is why the secondary reading shifts to abstract proximity.
phonetic
七 qī
seven (here phonetic)
Left 七 supplies the sound: qī → qiē / qiè with only a tone shift. The numerical 'seven' meaning is irrelevant here — pure sound carrier. Together with the knife on the right, the picture is 'a knife producing the qī-sound', the rasping noise of cutting.

Stroke Order

切 qiē