曝 (bào): to expose (photography or scand…

Meanings

1 to expose (photography or scandal)
2 to reveal; to leak (news or secrets)

Characters

曝

bào / pù

to expose to light; to reveal; to air out in the sun

Examples

他的丑闻被媒体曝光了。

Tā de chǒuwén bèi méitǐ bàoguāng le.

His scandal was exposed by the media.

这张照片曝光过度，看不清楚。

Zhè zhāng zhàopiàn bàoguāng guòdù, kàn bù qīngchǔ.

This photo is overexposed and hard to see clearly.

Tips

usage

曝 (bào) is primarily used in the compound 曝光 (bàoguāng), meaning 'to expose' (photographically or figuratively, as in exposing a scandal). It also has a reading of pù meaning 'to sun/air out,' as in 曝晒 (to expose to strong sunlight).

Components

radical

日 rì

sun; day

Sun radical on the left, the indexing radical. It puts 曝 firmly in the 'exposing-to-sunlight' family. The traditional sense was hanging clothes out to dry — modern 曝光 'exposure' (photo/scandal) keeps the same image of light being let onto something hidden.

phonetic

暴 bào

violent; expose (here phonetic)

Right side 暴 supplies both the bào sound and a strong semantic echo — 暴 itself already means 'to expose to the sun' (its bottom 氺 plus rice-graph pictured grain spread to dry). 曝 added an extra 日 to make the sun-drying sense unambiguous when 暴 drifted toward 'violent'.