尝 (cháng): to taste; to try (food)

Meanings

1 to taste; to try (food)
2 once; ever (literary)

Characters

尝

cháng

to taste; to try

Examples

HSK 2

你尝尝这道菜好不好吃。

Nǐ chángchang zhè dào cài hǎobuhǎo chī.

Try this dish and see if it's good.

HSK 3

我从来没尝过这种水果。

Wǒ cónglái méi cháng guò zhèzhǒng shuǐguǒ.

I've never tasted this kind of fruit before.

HSK 4

这汤尝起来有点淡，加点盐吧。

Zhè tāng cháng qǐlái yǒudiǎn dàn, jiā diǎn yán ba.

This soup tastes a bit bland; add some salt.

Tips

usage

尝尝 (reduplicated) softens the tone - 'have a little taste.' 尝 alone is more direct.

culture

The traditional form 嘗 has 口 (mouth) at the bottom - you taste with your mouth.

Components

phonetic

尚 shàng

still, esteem (phonetic, contracted form)

Top is a 5-stroke contraction of standalone 尚 (8 strokes), the lower 口 dropped - the same shortcut as in 党. 尚 supplies the sound (shàng → cháng, regular zh-/ch- alternation). The three short top strokes form the ⺌ silhouette, which is why 尝 indexes under Kangxi #42 小 (xiǎo) by tradition.

semantic

云 yún

cloud (semantic)

Bottom 云 - a simplification of traditional 嘗's lower stack (旨 'delicious' over 甘 'sweet'). The original picture was 'tasting to assess flavor.' The reform replaced the inner taste-graphics with the simpler 云 (cloud), which is now a graphic placeholder rather than a meaning-carrier - a pure visual substitute.

Filed under radical 小 (xiǎo, #42) by convention. 小 is not a separate component in 尝, so no strokes are highlighted.