查 (chá): to check

Meanings

1 to check
2 to investigate
3 to look up

Characters

查

chá

to check; to look up; to investigate

Examples

我查一下这个字。

Wǒ chá yíxià zhège zì.

Let me look up this character.

警察在查这件事。

Jǐngchá zài chá zhè jiàn shì.

The police are investigating this matter.

我查一下字典。

Wǒ chá yíxià zìdiǎn.

Let me check the dictionary.

Tips

usage

查 covers looking things up (in a dictionary, online), investigating (police work), and checking/inspecting (documents, tickets).

register

Two niche readings exist but never overlap with the everyday verb. As a surname, 查 is read Zhā — the writer 查良镛 (better known as 金庸) is the famous bearer. As a fruit name, 查 is a variant of 楂 in 山楂 (Chinese hawthorn) — almost always written 山楂 today. If you see 查 in a person's name, try Zhā first; everywhere else it's chá.

Components

radical

木 mù

tree; wood

Top tree radical (Kangxi #75) — the indexing radical. Originally 查 referred to a wooden raft or floating timber (the older sense preserved in the surname Zhā). The semantic drift to 'investigate, examine, look up' came via 'to inspect timber and goods' — a customs-and-trade extension. Same radical groups 林 (forest), 树 (tree), 板 (board), 桌 (table).

phonetic

旦 dàn

dawn; sunrise

Bottom phonetic 旦 — supplies the sound, shifting irregularly to chá. Pictographically 旦 depicts the sun (日) rising above the horizon (一) — dawn. Pure phonetic in 查, no semantic carryover. Same 旦 stands for 'first day' in 元旦 New Year's Day; spotting it as a phonetic component is rare but distinctive.