piē / piě
verb #10,347

Meanings

  1. 1 to cast aside; to abandon
  2. 2 to leave aside; to disregard
  3. 3 to skim off (foam, grease)

Examples

HSK 2
Tā piēxià jiārén jiù zǒu le.
He abandoned his family and left.
HSK 4
Tā bǎ tāng shàng de yóu piē diào le.
She skimmed the grease off the soup.
HSK 5
Wǒmen xiān piēkāi zhèxiē xìjié bù tán.
Let's leave these details aside for now.

Tips

mistakes
Same character as third-tone piě, the left-falling stroke, but a different word. First-tone piē means to cast aside: 撇开 to leave aside, 撇下 to abandon. If something is being dropped or ignored, the reading is piē.
usage
Two everyday uses sit under this reading. 撇开 and 撇下 push a person or a topic out of the way, often with a cold edge. In the kitchen it is the ladle word: you the foam or the grease off the top of a soup.

Components

radical
shǒu
hand (radical form of 手)
Left hand radical, the side-form of , and the indexing element. For this reading it marks a hand pushing something out of the way or lifting foam off the top, the same family as (throw) and (push aside).
phonetic
worn out; shabby (here phonetic)
Right side is the phonetic, bì drifting to piē. The same series gives (to glance), which keeps both the sound and the sense of something brushed quickly past.

Stroke Order

piē