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吐

tù / tǔ
verb HSK 5 #1,458

Meanings

  1. 1 to vomit
  2. 2 to throw up

Examples

HSK 1
她坐车的时候想吐。
Tā zuòchē de shíhou xiǎng tù.
She felt like vomiting when riding in the car.
HSK 1
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.
HSK 4
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