捋 (lǚ): to stroke; to smooth with the f…

Meanings

1 to stroke; to smooth with the fingers (e.g. a beard, a thread)
2 to pluck off with the fingers (alternate reading luō)
3 (figurative) to sort out; to think through

Characters

捋

lǚ / luō

to stroke / to strip off; radical 扌 (hand)

Examples

老先生捋着胡子，慢慢地说。

Lǎoxiānsheng lǚ zhe húzi, mànman de shuō.

The old gentleman stroked his beard and spoke slowly.

我先捋一下思路。

Wǒ xiān lǚ yīxià sīlù.

Let me first sort out my train of thought.

她捋起袖子准备下厨。

Tā lǚ qǐ xiùzi zhǔnbèi xiàchú.

She rolled up her sleeves to start cooking.

Tips

mistakes

捋 has two readings with two distinct meanings: lǚ = 'to stroke / smooth along its length' (stroke a beard, roll up sleeves, sort out thoughts); luō = 'to grab and pull along the length' (strip leaves off a branch, pluck a fistful of seeds). Same gesture mostly, but luō implies harvesting force. Modern speech leans on lǚ; luō survives mainly in dialect and set phrases.

memory

Picture 扌 (hand) + 寽 — and 寽 itself is an oracle-bone drawing of fingers picking something off. The whole character is literally 'hand-picking-fingers': run your fingers down a length of something.

Components

radical

扌 shǒu

hand (radical form of 手)

Side-hand radical on the left — compressed left-side form of 手. Indexes 捋 in the manual-action family with 打 to hit, 拉 to pull, 抓 to grab, 摸 to feel. 捋 means to stroke or smooth something between thumb and fingers, so the hand carries the full semantic weight.

phonetic

寽 lǚ

to gather; to pick (archaic)

Right side 寽 supplies the sound lǚ exactly — and also a faint semantic echo, since 寽 itself depicts a hand picking something up. The handed-up imagery doubles down on the 扌 radical: with two hands working, 捋 captures the sliding pinch used to strip leaves from a stem.