哄 (hōng): roar of laughter; hubbub; uproa…

Meanings

1 roar of laughter; hubbub; uproar (onomatopoeic)
2 to roar (as a crowd); (of many people) to act all at once

Characters

哄

hōng

roar of laughter; hubbub; uproar (onomatopoeic)

Examples

HSK 4

打折消息一公布，顾客就一哄而上。

Dǎzhé xiāoxi yī gōngbù, gùkè jiù yīhōng'érshàng.

As soon as the sale was announced, customers rushed in all at once.

HSK 7-9

他的笑话让全场哄堂大笑。

Tā de xiàohuà ràng quánchǎng hōngtáng-dàxiào.

His joke had the whole room bursting into laughter.

Tips

usage

The hōng reading is the noise-of-a-crowd word - onomatopoeic, paints a soundscape. Key collocations: 哄堂大笑 (whole room roars with laughter), 哄笑 (hoots of laughter), 哄抬 (to inflate prices artificially via mass behavior), 哄抢 (panic-buying / looting). The 一哄+verb pattern (一哄而上, 一哄而散, 一哄而起) describes a crowd surging into or out of action all at once.

memory

Picture the difference: hǒng is one mouth whispering into one ear (coaxing), hōng is many mouths blowing up at once (the room roaring). The first-tone hōng even sounds louder - keep the tone-volume association in mind.

Components

radical

口 kǒu

mouth

Same mouth radical as in the hǒng reading. In the hōng sense the radical takes on a 'many mouths' feeling - the noise of a crowd, not one quiet voice.

phonetic

共 gòng

together; common

Same 共 phonetic, and here the 'together' meaning lights up: a crowd ALL TOGETHER producing the noise. The hōng reading is the most semantically transparent of the three - mouths + together = roar of a crowd.