kuā
verb HSK 7-9 #6,570

Meanings

  1. 1 to praise
  2. 2 to boast
  3. 3 to exaggerate

Examples

Lǎoshī kuā tā xuéxí hěn nǔlì.
The teacher praised him for studying hard.
Dàjiā dōu kuā zhè dào cài hǎochī.
Everyone praised how delicious this dish is.

Tips

usage
on its own usually means 'to praise' in everyday speech. The 'boast/exaggerate' meaning appears mainly in compounds like 夸大, 夸张, .

Components

radical
big; large
Top — the indexing radical, picturing a person with arms outstretched to gesture how big. Anchors in the idea of magnification: making something seem bigger than it is. From there came the modern senses to boast and to exaggerate.
phonetic
kuī
lacking; short
Bottom supplies the sound (kuī → kuā with a regular vowel shift). itself depicts breath running out, ironically pairing well with above: a lot of empty breath puffed up to look big — a vivid mnemonic for the boast meaning. Same phonetic in (stride), (collapse), (carry on the arm).

Stroke Order

kuā