臭 (chòu): stench; stink

Meanings

1 stench; stink
2 smelly; foul
3 to smell bad
4 repulsive; disgusting
5 terrible; awful
6 severely; badly
7 dud; failed

Characters

自 (nose) + 犬 (dog) — what a dog's nose detects: smell. The chòu reading specialized to bad smells; the older neutral 'odor' sense survives under xiù.

Examples

这个垃圾太臭了。

Zhège lājī tài chòu le.

This garbage is so smelly.

臭豆腐闻起来臭，吃起来香。

Chòudòufu wén qǐlai chòu, chī qǐlai xiāng.

Stinky tofu smells bad but tastes great.

他的名声已经臭了。

Tā de míngshēng yǐjīng chòu le.

His reputation has gone bad.

他被骂得好臭。

Tā bèi mà de hǎo chòu.

He was scolded severely.

Tips

usage

chòu covers both literal stink (臭味, 口臭) and figurative ruin (臭名 bad reputation, 搞臭 to discredit, 臭棋 a blunder move). It also intensifies a beating or scolding (e.g. 骂得好臭 = scolded badly).

mistakes

臭 has a second reading xiù (the old form of 嗅) meaning sense of smell or neutral odor — used in set phrases like 乳臭未干 and 无声无臭. Default to chòu in modern speech; switch to xiù only inside these literary fossils.

Components

radical

自 zì

self; nose (original)

Top 自 is the indexing radical. Originally a pictograph of a nose (still visible in 鼻 'nose') — the organ that does the smelling. The 'self' meaning is a later borrowing; here the nose-meaning stays alive: 臭 is what the nose detects when something stinks.

semantic

犬 quǎn

dog

Bottom 犬 (dog) supplies the smelling agent. Compound ideograph: nose + dog = the keen sniffer detecting an odor. The original neutral sense 'smell, scent' (now read xiù) narrowed over time to 'stink, foul' under the dominant chòu reading.