嗝 (gé): hiccup

Meanings

1 hiccup
2 belch
3 burp

Characters

嗝

gé

hiccup; belch

Examples

HSK 1

他喝水太快，打了一个嗝。

Tā hē shuǐ tài kuài, dǎ le yī gè gé.

He drank water too fast and got a hiccup.

HSK 7-9

打嗝是很正常的生理现象。

Dǎgé shì hěn zhèngcháng de shēnglǐ xiànxiàng.

Hiccupping is a very normal physiological phenomenon.

Tips

usage

嗝 is commonly used with 打: 打嗝 means 'to hiccup' or 'to burp'. The character combines 口 (mouth) with 鬲 (an ancient cooking vessel), suggesting sounds from the mouth.

Components

radical

口 kǒu

mouth

Mouth radical on the left - the indexing radical, marking 嗝 as something that comes out of the mouth. Hiccups and belches travel up from the stomach and exit through 口, so the radical does honest semantic work alongside 喷 (sneeze), 吐 (vomit), 咳 (cough).

phonetic

鬲 gé

ancient three-legged cauldron

Right side 鬲 is the pictograph of a hollow-legged Bronze-Age cooking vessel - it supplies the sound gé directly with no drift. The bubbling-pot imagery is a happy accident for hiccups: gas bubbling up out of a hollow vessel matches what a stomach belch feels like. Same phonetic powers 隔 (separate), 膈 (diaphragm).