抖 can mean involuntary trembling (from cold, fear, nervousness) or deliberate shaking (to shake off dust). Also appears in 抖音 (Dǒuyīn, TikTok's Chinese name — literally 'shaking sound').
memory
The hand radical 扌 on the left + 斗 (dǒu, fight/struggle) on the right — a struggling hand that trembles.
Hand radical — shaking, trembling, and shaking-out-dust are all hand actions. 抖 joins 摇 sway, 拍 pat, 撒 sprinkle, 拿 take, 推 push, all marked by 扌 on the left.
Phonetic 斗 dǒu directly matches 抖 dǒu — exact tonal match. Pictograph of a long-handled dipper/ladle, traditionally used for measuring grain. In 抖 it works as pure phonetic, though there is a faint mnemonic — shaking dust out of the dipper.
