掉 (diào): to fall

Meanings

1 to fall
2 to drop
3 to lose

Characters

掉

diào

to drop; to fall; to lose

Hand radical 扌 + 卓 (tall/outstanding) — reaching up high and dropping something.

Examples

手机掉了。

Shǒujī diào le.

The phone fell/dropped.

树叶掉下来了。

Shùyè diào xiàlái le.

The leaves fell down.

把这个删掉。

Bǎ zhège shān diào.

Delete this.

Tips

grammar

掉 as a complement means away/off/gone: 忘掉 (forget), 扔掉 (throw away), 卖掉 (sell off), 删掉 (delete).

usage

verb + 掉 emphasizes completion or removal. One of the most productive complements in Chinese.

Components

radical

扌 shǒu

hand (left-side form of 手)

Hand radical on the left — the indexing semantic. 掉 covers a wide arc of hand-actions: drop, lose, swing, exchange, get rid of. The 扌 anchors all of them as things you do with the hand. Joins the manipulation family: 拿 (take), 放 (place), 扔 (throw), 换 (exchange) — all hand-driven verbs.

phonetic

卓 zhuō

outstanding; tall (here phonetic)

Right component supplies the sound: zhuō → diào with significant drift. 卓 originally pictured a person on a high platform, hence 'eminent, towering'. As a phonetic it also yields 悼 dào (mourn) and 桌 zhuō (table) — a small family where the diao/zhuo split traces back to one Old-Chinese rime.