gǎo
noun #25,513

Measure Word

Meanings

  1. 1 pickaxe
  2. 2 pick (mining/digging tool)

Examples

Kuànggōng yòng gǎo wājué kuàngshí.
Miners use pickaxes to dig up ore.
Tā ná zhe yī bǎ gǎo kāishǐ wā dì.
He picked up a pickaxe and started digging the ground.

Tips

usage
specifically refers to a pickaxe or similar heavy digging tool. Read Hào for the ancient city name 鎬京, the Western Zhou dynasty capital.

Components

radical
jīn
metal; gold (left-side form of 金)
Left metal radical, the traditional left-side form of (the simplified equivalent is ). Indexes in the metals-and-tools family alongside iron, copper. Signals the entry is a metal implement - here, a pickaxe with an iron head fixed to a wooden haft.
phonetic
gāo
tall; high
Right supplies the sound gāo with a tone shift to gǎo. A faint semantic flavour also fits: a pickaxe is a tool raised high overhead and brought down with force, hammering into rock or hard ground. Same phonetic in 稿 manuscript.

Stroke Order

gǎo