verb #22,395

Meanings

  1. 1 to dispel
  2. 2 to drive away
  3. 3 to eliminate (illness, evil, cold)

Examples

Zhèzhǒng zhōngyào kěyǐ qū tán zhǐké.
This herbal medicine can dispel phlegm and relieve coughing.
Hē jiāngtāng kěyǐ qū fēng sàn hán.
Drinking ginger soup can dispel wind and drive out the cold.

Tips

usage
is primarily a Traditional Chinese Medicine term. Common compounds: 祛痰 (to expel phlegm), 祛风 (to dispel wind/chill), 祛湿 (to remove dampness), 祛寒 (to drive out cold). It is rarely used outside medical or herbal contexts.

Components

radical
shì
spirit; altar (radical form of 示)
Left altar radical, side-form of , picturing a stone altar where offerings were laid for the spirits. originally meant a ritual driving off evil or disease, so the spirit-altar root tags it as religious action. Same family: sacrifice, blessing, spirit.
phonetic
to leave; to go away
Right supplies the sound; qù drifts to qū with tone change. also pulls semantic weight: it means 'to remove, send away,' which fits the dispel-and-banish core of perfectly. A neat phono-semantic compound where the phonetic is also conceptually aligned.

Stroke Order