倒 (dǎo): to fall; to collapse

Meanings

1 to fall; to collapse
2 to lie horizontally
3 to fail; to go bankrupt
4 to overthrow
5 to change (trains or buses)
6 to resell at a profit

Characters

倒

dǎo

to fall; to collapse; to overthrow

Examples

他在雪地上滑了一下就倒了。

Tā zài xuědì shàng huá le yīxià jiù dǎo le.

He slipped on the snow and went down.

那家公司去年就倒了。

Nà jiā gōngsī qùnián jiù dǎo le.

That company went under last year.

去机场要倒两次车。

Qù jīchǎng yào dǎo liǎng cì chē.

Getting to the airport takes two transfers.

Tips

mistakes

倒 has two readings and they sit at opposite ends of the meaning space. dǎo (3rd tone) = something goes DOWN: a person falls (摔倒), a building collapses (倒塌), a business fails (倒闭), a regime is overthrown (打倒). dào (4th tone) = something gets FLIPPED or REVERSED: pour out a liquid (倒水), turn an image upside down (倒影), back up a car (倒车 — note the SAME chars also read dǎochē meaning 'transfer between buses'), or as an adverb meaning 'on the contrary' (倒是). Quick test: if a thing toppled or collapsed → dǎo; if a thing was inverted, poured, or it's 'but/yet/actually' → dào.

memory

Both readings share the right-side phonetic 到 (to arrive). Picture dǎo as 'arriving at the ground' — the body, the building, the company all reach the floor. Picture dào as 'arriving the wrong way round' — the bucket arrives mouth-down, the car arrives back-first, the situation arrives contrary to what you expected.

Components

radical

亻 rén

person (radical form)

Person radical on the left — the side-form of 人. Anchors 倒 as something a person does or has happen to them: falling over, being knocked down, tipping a vessel. Same radical in 你, 他, 信 — the human-action family.

phonetic

到 dào

to arrive; to reach

Right side 到 supplies the sound: dào → dǎo (3rd tone, fall/collapse) or dào (4th tone, invert/pour). Semantically there's a faint thread too — 'arriving' becomes 'arriving at the ground' for the dǎo sense, and 'arriving in reverse order' for the dào sense. 到 itself contains the knife radical 刂.