腾

騰
téng
verb HSK 7-9 #11,515

Meanings

  1. 1 to gallop
  2. 2 to soar
  3. 3 to make room
  4. 4 to vacate

Examples

HSK 3
Qǐng bāng wǒ téng gè dìfang fàng xíngli.
Please make some room for me to put my luggage.
HSK 7-9
Jùlóng téngkōng ér qǐ.
The great dragon soared into the sky.

Tips

usage
In everyday speech, 腾 most often means "to make room/vacate" (腾地方, 腾出来). The "soar" meaning appears in literary/formal contexts.

Components

phonetic
朕 zhèn
I (imperial); omen
Left side 朕 supplies the sound - zhèn drifting to téng through a zh/t alternation in old readings. 朕 is the imperial first-person pronoun used by emperors. Same phonetic feeds 滕, 誊, 藤. Indexed under Kangxi #130 肉 (ròu, meat) via the meat-radical ⺼ tucked inside 朕 on the left.
semantic
马 mǎ
horse
Three-stroke horse on the lower right, contributing the meaning. 腾 originally pictured a horse galloping fast, leaping into the air - bound forms 奔腾 to gallop, 飞腾 to soar, 腾飞 to take off all keep that surging-upward sense. Simplified 马 preserves the running silhouette of full-form 馬.

Filed under radical 肉 (ròu, #130) by convention. 肉 is not a separate component in 腾, so no strokes are highlighted.

In Pop Culture

腾讯 Téngxùn
Tencent
tech giant - name means 'galloping message'

Stroke Order

腾 téng