爬

pá
verb HSK 3 #1,451

Meanings

  1. 1 to crawl
  2. 2 to climb

Characters

Contains 爪 (claw) + 巴 (cling) - clinging with claws.

Examples

HSK 3
Māo pá shàng le shù.
The cat climbed up the tree.
HSK 5
Bǎobao huì pá le.
The baby can crawl now.
HSK 6
Wǒmen pá shàng le shāndǐng.
We climbed to the top of the mountain.

Components

radical
爪 zhǎo
claw; talon (radical)
Top radical 爪 - a clawed hand reaching down, three angled strokes plus the curved palm. Indexing radical for 爬 and the perfect semantic match: crawling and climbing both rely on hooking your claws into something. Same radical drives 抓 (grab), 觅 (search), 受 (receive), 爱 (love - historically a hand offering).
phonetic
巴 bā
snake; cling to
Right-bottom phonetic 巴 supplies the sound (bā → pá, a related labial reading). 巴 originally pictured a coiled snake or a lizard-like creature clinging to surfaces, so it bleeds a strong semantic flavour: clinging, latching on. Same phonetic appears in 把 (grasp), 吧 (suggestion particle), 爸 (father).

Stroke Order

爬 pá