tāo
noun

Meanings

  1. 1 a bow case (classical)
  2. 2 to sheathe; to conceal (classical)

Examples

Zhàn shì jiéshù hòu, gōng dōu shōu jìn tāo zhōng.
When the war ended the bows were put into their cases.

Tips

history
is not used independently today. It is an old word for a bow's cloth case, and by extension 'to sheathe / hide away'; the modern character (as in 韬光养晦, 'hide one's light') took over both senses. The bow radical gives the meaning.
register
Archaic and literary. Modern Chinese writes ; is met only in classical text and etymology notes.

Components

radical
gōng
bow
(a bow) is the indexing radical and supplies the meaning of : the case a bow is slipped into, hence 'to put away, conceal'.
semantic
a hand action
The right side is a 'hand acting' element with a downward stroke, picturing the hand drawing the cover over the bow in ; it reinforces the action of sheathing rather than supplying sound.

No stroke data for ; the glyph shown is your device font, so component strokes can't be highlighted.

Stroke Order

tāo