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吐

tù / tǔ
verb HSK 5 #1,458

Meanings

  1. 1 to vomit
  2. 2 to throw up

Examples

她坐车的时候想吐。
Tā zuòchē de shíhou xiǎng tù.
She felt like vomiting when riding in the car.
他喝多了，吐了一地。
Tā hē duō le, tùle yì dì.
He drank too much and threw up all over the place.
宝宝把奶吐出来了。
Bǎobao bǎ nǎi tù chūlái le.
The baby vomited out the milk.

Tips

usage
Reserved for involuntary expulsion you didn't choose: motion sickness, food poisoning, drinking, pregnancy. Found in 呕吐 (vomit), 孕吐 (morning sickness), 吐血 (cough up blood). Online slang 吐了 ('I'm done / that's gross') borrows this involuntary-disgust sense.
mistakes
Watch the tone. 吐痰 (spit phlegm) is deliberate, but 吐 alone usually means throwing up. Saying 我想吐 (3rd tone) sounds like you want to spit on purpose; 我想吐 (4th tone) is the natural way to say 'I feel sick'.

Components

radical
口 kǒu
mouth
Left mouth radical — marks 吐 as a mouth-action, the canonical exit route. Same family as 吃 (eat), 喝 (drink), 唱 (sing). Here the mouth does the opposite of eating — sending material out instead of in.
phonetic
土 tǔ
earth; soil (here phonetic)
Right 土 supplies the sound (tǔ, exact match including tone). Same phonetic series as 杜, 肚. A faint scenic hook sticks too — spit lands on 土 — but the role is purely sonic. Pure phono-semantic compound.

Stroke Order

吐 tù