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折

zhé / shé / zhē
verb HSK 4 #4,804

Meanings

  1. 1 to break; to fracture; to snap
  2. 2 to fold; to bend; to crease
  3. 3 discount; rebate (in price)
  4. 4 setback; reverse

Examples

他把树枝折断了。
Tā bǎ shùzhī zhéduàn le.
He broke the branch in two.
请把纸折成两半。
Qǐng bǎ zhǐ zhéchéng liǎngbàn.
Please fold the paper in half.
这个商品打七折。
Zhège shāngpǐn dǎ qī zhé.
This item is 30 percent off.

Tips

usage
Shopping shorthand to memorise: 打X折 means you pay X tenths of the original price. 打七折 = pay 70 percent = 30 percent off; 打五折 = half price; 打对折 also means half off. Don't read it the Western way ('seven off').
mistakes
折 has three readings. zhé is the default — fold, break, discount, twist. shé is the colloquial "to snap (with a clean crack)" or "to lose money" (折本). zhē is the kinetic "to flip / toss / mess about" — almost only in 折腾 and 折跟头 (to do a somersault).

Components

radical
扌 shǒu
hand (left-side radical)
Left hand radical — three strokes, the compressed left-side form of 手. Anchors 折 in the verbs-of-the-hand family alongside 打 (hit), 拿 (take), 推 (push), 抓 (grab). Sets the action: a hand doing something to wood — specifically, here, a hand swinging an axe.
semantic
斤 jīn
axe; catty
Right axe component — pictograph of a hafted axe-head (the same 斤 used as a weight unit, 'catty', because axes were once standard weights). Compound ideograph: hand (扌) + axe (斤) = breaking wood with a blade, hence 'to break, snap, fold'. From the snap-an-arrow image came 'discount' (a deduction = a snapped-off piece) and 'setback' (something broken).

Stroke Order

折 zhé