verb #40,685

Meanings

  1. 1 (of something hard or rough) to press uncomfortably against the body
  2. 2 to chafe
  3. 3 to hurt by digging in (like a stone in one's shoe)

Examples

HSK 2
Chuáng shàng yǒu shénme dōngxi gè de wǒ shuì bù zháo.
Something on the bed is poking me - I can't sleep.
HSK 7-9
Xié lǐ yǒu kē shízǐ gè jiǎo.
There's a pebble in my shoe digging into my foot.

Tips

memory
= (stone radical) + . The stone radical is the giveaway: it's specifically about a hard object pressing into flesh. Think of stepping on a Lego brick: that sensation is .
mistakes
Colloquial, pronounced gè in this 'press uncomfortably' sense. The character also has a literary reading luò (in 硌牙 'gritty against teeth'), but spoken Mandarin almost always uses gè.

Components

radical
shí
stone; rock
is the stone radical and gives its image, a pebble or stone pressing uncomfortably against skin or shoe. The verb captures the feeling of something hard digging in. Same radical in , , , stone-and-impact vocabulary.
phonetic
each
gives the sound gè exactly, same tone. The 'each' meaning is irrelevant here, pure phonetic borrowing. Same series gives , , , all sharing similar endings from old Chinese.

Stroke Order