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宿

xiǔ / sù / xiù
measure word #4,852

Meanings

  1. 1 classifier for nights (spent sleeping somewhere)
  2. 2 night

Examples

HSK 1
我们在朋友家住了一宿。
Wǒmen zài péngyou jiā zhù le yī xiǔ.
We stayed at a friend's place for one night.
HSK 3
他一宿没合眼。
Tā yī xiǔ méi héyǎn.
He hasn't slept a wink all night.
HSK 5
这次出差在北京住了三宿。
Zhècì chūchāi zài Běijīng zhù le sān xiǔ.
On this trip we stayed three nights in Beijing.

Tips

register
The xiǔ reading is northern-colloquial - common in Beijing speech and northeastern dialects, less so in southern Mandarin. Pattern: number + 宿 = that many nights of stay. Compare with 晚 (more neutral, written) or 夜 (literary): all three can count nights, but xiǔ feels casual and embodied - "three sleeps worth."
memory
Mnemonic: xiǔ sounds like a yawn - "shyooo, time for bed." Use it whenever you can count how many actual nights you slept, not just calendar days.

Components

radical
宀 mián
roof (radical)
Top radical 宀 - a peaked roof with two short walls, indexing radical for 宿. Establishes 'inside a building' - and since 宿 is about lodging and overnighting, the roof carries the core meaning. Same radical anchors the home-family 家 (home), 室 (room), 安 (peace), 客 (guest), 寄 (board with).
semantic
亻 rén
person (semantic)
Inner-left 亻 - the side-form of 人 (person), tucked under the roof. Pictures the lodger or overnight guest taking shelter for the night. The combination 'person under roof' makes 宿 transparent as 'to stay, to lodge'.
semantic
百 bǎi
hundred; (here) mat
Right of the 亻, the 百 shape. In oracle-bone graphs this element was a woven mat that the figure rested on for the night, only later conflated with the modern 'hundred' character. So the full picture is roof + person + mat = lodging. Modern 百 retains only its surface meaning 'hundred'; here it functions as a semantic remnant of the original sleeping mat.

Stroke Order

宿 xiǔ