zhāo / cháo
noun #1,194

Meanings

  1. 1 morning; daybreak
  2. 2 day

Examples

Niánqīng rén chōngmǎn le zhāoqì.
Young people are full of vitality.
Zhāoyáng cóng shān hòu shēngqǐ.
The morning sun rose from behind the mountains.
Zhāolìngxīgǎi ràng rén nányǐ gēnshàng.
Policy changed overnight makes it hard for people to keep up.

Tips

register
Mostly literary or fixed-phrase. For 'morning' in everyday speech, use 早上 or 早晨; lives in compounds — 朝阳, 朝霞, 朝气 — and in chengyu like 朝三暮四.
mistakes
Same glyph as (court/towards). Rule of thumb: if the compound is about morning, sunrise or short timespans (one day, fleeting), read ; if it's about a dynasty, government, or facing a direction, read .

Components

radical
yuè
moon
Right — also the indexing radical. The fading moon paired with the rising sun pinpoints the daybreak moment. Same radical family as and .
semantic
gàn
sun rising through grass (graphic)
Left 8-stroke stack — a picture of the sun () climbing through tall grass. This is the literal 'morning' half of the character; the zhāo reading preserves the original dawn sense.

Stroke Order

zhāo