刮 (guā): to scrape; to scratch

Meanings

1 to scrape; to scratch
2 to blow (of wind)
3 to shave

Characters

刮

guā

to scrape; to blow (wind)

Examples

外面刮大风了。

Wàimiàn guā dàfēng le.

It's very windy outside.

他每天早上刮胡子。

Tā měitiān zǎoshang guāhúzi.

He shaves every morning.

把锅底刮干净。

Bǎ guō dǐ guā gānjìng.

Scrape the bottom of the pot clean.

今天刮的是北风。

Jīntiān guā de shì běifēng.

A north wind is blowing today.

Tips

usage

刮风 (guā fēng) is the standard way to say 'the wind blows.' Unlike English, the verb 刮 takes the wind as its object: 刮风 literally = 'scrape wind.'

memory

The knife radical 刂 on the right suggests a scraping/cutting action — scraping a surface, scraping whiskers off your face, or wind scraping across the land.

Components

radical

刂 dāo

knife (right-side form of 刀)

Knife radical on the right — the right-side form of 刀. To 刮 is to scrape, shave, or strip with a blade — a wind that 刮 strips the leaves off trees. The radical is exact. Same radical heads 刮 with 切 cut, 划 stroke, 刷 brush, 剪 scissors — the blade-action family.

phonetic

舌 shé

tongue (here phonetic)

Left side 舌 supplies the sound: shé → guā with substantial Old Chinese drift through the *kw-/sy- onset alternation. Faint semantic flavor: a 舌 (tongue) scrapes against the inside of the mouth, fitting 刮's scraping-clean motion. Same phonetic also gives 话 huà (speech) and 活 huó (alive).