叱 (chì): to scold

Meanings

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

Characters

叱

chì

to shout at; scold

Examples

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.

他被父亲叱了一顿。

Tā bèi fùqīn chì le yī dùn.

He got bawled out by his father.

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.