叱 (chì) · to scold, to shout at, to bawl out

Meanings

1 to scold
2 to shout at
3 to bawl out
4 to rebuke loudly

Characters

叱

chì

to shout at; scold

Examples

HSK 4

他被父亲叱了一顿。

Tā bèi fùqīn chì le yī dùn.

He got bawled out by his father.

HSK 6

将军一声叱令，士兵立刻冲了上去。

Jiāngjūn yī shēng chì lìng, shìbīng lìkè chōng le shàngqù.

At one shout of the general's command, the soldiers immediately charged forward.

Tips

register

叱 is literary / classical and almost never appears alone in modern speech - you meet it in compounds like 叱责 (chìzé, to rebuke), 叱咤风云 (chìzhà fēngyún, to shake heaven and earth with one's roar), and 怒叱 (nùchì, to angrily scold). In modern conversation, 骂 (mà) or 训 (xùn) replace it.

memory

The character is 口 (mouth) + 匕 (a dagger-like shape). Picture a sharp blade of sound shooting out of one mouth - a blast of scolding.

Components

radical

口 kǒu

mouth

Left mouth radical - a pictograph of an open mouth. Indexes 叱 in the speech-sound family alongside 叫 to shout, 喊 to yell, 吼 to roar. Marks 叱 as something done with the voice, here a sharp angry rebuke.

phonetic

匕 bǐ

spoon; dagger

Right 匕 supplies the sound - bǐ drifting to chì in an old phonetic series shared with 七. The original dagger/spoon meaning does not transfer; 匕 here is purely a sound tag for the sharp, clipped syllable that gives 叱 its bark.