shú
adjective HSK 2 #2,621

Meanings

  1. 1 ripe; cooked
  2. 2 familiar
  3. 3 skilled

Examples

Zhège píngguǒ shú le.
This apple is ripe.
Wǒ gēn tā hěn shú.
I know him very well.
Fàn zuò shú le.
The food is cooked.

Tips

usage
has three main uses: 1) ripe (fruit), 2) cooked (food), 3) familiar/well-acquainted (people). 熟人 means 'acquaintance'.
mistakes
Also pronounced shóu in some dialects, but standard Mandarin uses shú for all meanings.

Components

radical
huǒ
fire (bottom radical variant)
Bottom indexing radical (fire-variant of ) — the four dots are flames under a cooking pot. Anchors in the cooking domain. From 'cooked' came 'ripe' (cooked by sun) and 'familiar' (well-cooked, well-known). Same family as (boil), (roast), (burn), (fry).
phonetic
shú
who; which (here phonetic and original semantic)
Top-and-left component supplies the sound (shú — exact match). Originally itself meant 'cooked' (depicting food being prepared in a vessel), but later was borrowed for the question word 'who.' was created by adding the fire radical below to keep the cooking sense distinct.

Stroke Order

shú