耙 (pá): rake (n.)

Meanings

1 rake (n.)
2 to rake (v.)
3 harrow / to harrow

Characters

耙

pá

rake; harrow

Examples

他用耙把落叶耙到一起。

Tā yòng pá bǎ luòyè pá dào yìqǐ.

He raked the fallen leaves into a pile with a rake.

猪八戒的武器是九齿钉耙。

Zhū Bājiè de wǔqì shì jiǔ chǐ dīngpá.

Zhu Bajie's weapon is the nine-toothed rake.

Tips

usage

Two readings: 耙 pá = a rake (the leaf-collecting / hay-gathering hand tool) and the verb 'to rake'; 耙 bà = a harrow (the tractor-pulled tool that breaks up soil) and the verb 'to harrow'. The two senses split by reading: pá for the hand rake, bà for the soil harrow.

culture

The most famous 耙 in Chinese culture is 九齿钉耙 (jiǔ chǐ dīngpá, 'nine-toothed iron rake') - the signature weapon of 猪八戒 (Zhu Bajie / Pigsy) in 《西游记》 (Xī Yóu Jì, Journey to the West). It was a parting gift from the Jade Emperor when Pigsy was Marshal of the Heavenly Reeds, before being banished to earth.

Components

radical

耒 lěi

plough handle (radical)

Left 耒 - pictograph of a wooden plough handle with foot-rest crossbar. As the indexing radical it places 耙 with farming tools: 耕 to plough, 耘 to weed, 耧 seed drill. A 耙 is a rake or harrow dragged across a field, so the plough-handle radical does direct semantic work.

phonetic

巴 bā

to long for; tail

Right 巴 supplies the sound - bā shifting to pá (and bà for the harrow reading). Same phonetic frames 把 to grasp, 爸 dad, 吧 sentence-final particle, all sharing the bā/pá reading. Borrowed purely for pronunciation, with no semantic link to the rake.