嘬

zuō
verb #39,233

Meanings

  1. 1 to suck (with the mouth)
  2. 2 to gnaw; to eat ravenously

Examples

HSK 7-9
Yīng'ér zhèng shǐjìn zuō zhe nǎipíng.
The baby is sucking hard at the milk bottle.

Tips

history
嘬 is an uncommon character. The colloquial reading zuō means 'to suck' (a baby at the breast, sucking a sweet); a separate literary reading chuài means 'to gnaw / eat greedily'. Built on the mouth radical 口 with phonetic 最.
memory
Mouth radical 口 plus 最: pulling at something with the mouth as hard as you possibly can.

Components

radical
口 kǒu
mouth
The 口 'mouth' radical marks 嘬 as an action of the mouth and is its indexing radical.
phonetic
最 zuì
most
The 最 element supplies the sound for 嘬; it is purely phonetic, the reading drifted from the modern value.

Stroke Order

嘬 zuō