熬 (áo): to endure

Meanings

1 to endure
2 to hold out
3 to cook on a slow fire
4 to stay up late

Characters

熬

áo

to endure; to simmer

Examples

他经常熬夜学习。

Tā jīngcháng áoyè xuéxí.

He often stays up late studying.

再熬几天就放假了。

Zài áo jǐ tiān jiù fàngjià le.

Just hold out a few more days and it's vacation.

她在厨房熬粥。

Tā zài chúfáng áo zhōu.

She is cooking porridge in the kitchen.

Tips

usage

熬 has two main uses: 熬夜 (to stay up late) and slow-boil cooking (熬粥, 熬汤). Both share the idea of something dragging on a long time. A lighter tone āo is sometimes heard for plain simmering, but the áo reading covers everyday use.

memory

Picture slowly cooking soup over fire (灬 at the bottom). It takes patience to endure the long wait.

Components

radical

灬 huǒ

fire (bottom form)

Bottom four-dot fire radical, the squashed form of 火 used when fire sits underneath. It supplies the meaning: prolonged heat under a pot, exactly what 熬 captures: to simmer, to stew, by extension to endure a long ordeal. It joins 煮, 蒸, 烹, and 焦 in the cooking-by-fire family.

phonetic

敖 áo

ramble; haughty (here phonetic)

Top 敖 supplies the sound, an exact áo match with no drift. As a standalone word it means to roam or be haughty, a sense mostly absent here; it is read purely for phonetic value. The same phonetic drives 傲, 遨, 嗷, and 螯.