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炮

páo / pào
verb #6,148

Meanings

  1. 1 (traditional Chinese medicine) to prepare herbs by roasting or parching in a pan
  2. 2 to process (medicinal materials) by dry heat

Examples

传统药店按照古法严格炮制药材。
Chuántǒng yàodiàn ànzhào gǔfǎ yángé páozhì yàocái.
Traditional pharmacists roast and process herbs strictly according to ancient methods.
他凭空炮制了一段假历史来欺骗读者。
Tā píngkōng páozhì le yīduàn jiǎ lìshǐ lái qīpiàn dúzhě.
He fabricated a fake history out of thin air to deceive his readers.
炮烙之刑被记载为商纣王使用的最残酷刑罚。
Páoluò zhī xíng bèi jìzǎi wéi ShāngZhòuwáng shǐyòng de zuì cánkù xíngfá.
The burning-pillar torture is recorded as the cruelest punishment used by King Zhou of Shang.

Tips

history
The páo reading preserves the original sense of the character: a cooking/roasting method in which food (or, later, herbs) is wrapped and dry-heated. From Han times this method became standard in Chinese medicine — soaking, drying, frying, calcining herbs to change their properties. Today 炮制 has split into two readings of its own: the literal "to roast-process herbs" and the figurative "to concoct / fabricate (fake news, a forged document, a hatchet job)" — both pronounced páozhì.
register
Use páo in only two settings: TCM (炮制 preparing herbs, 炮炼 refining herbs) and the historical/literary 炮烙 torture image. Everything modern and military — cannons, firecrackers, slang — stays pào.

Components

radical
火 huǒ
fire
Fire radical on the left makes the meaning explicit: anything explosive or igniting. It indexes 炮 in the fire-and-burst family alongside 烧 to burn, 烟 smoke, 爆 to explode. Originally 炮 named a roasting method (wrapping meat in clay and burning it); the cannon and firecracker senses came later as the fire-image broadened.
phonetic
包 bāo
to wrap; bundle
Right is 包 'to wrap', supplying the sound — bāo drifting to pào with tone shift and regular b/p alternation (e.g. 跑, 抱). 包 also leaks meaning since the original 炮 wrapped food in clay before roasting. Modern compounds keep the wrap-and-burst image: 鞭炮 firecracker (wrapped charge), 大炮 cannon (wrapped powder).

Stroke Order

炮 páo