拔 (bá) · to pull up; to pull out; to uproot

Meanings

1 to pull up; to pull out; to uproot
2 to select; to promote; to stand out

Characters

拔

bá

to pull up; to uproot

扌(hand) + 犮 - pulling something out with the hand

Examples

HSK 3

他把草拔出来了。

Tā bǎ cǎo bá chūlái le.

He pulled out the weeds.

HSK 3

拔河比赛明天开始。

Báhé bǐsài míngtiān kāishǐ.

The tug-of-war competition starts tomorrow.

HSK 5

医生帮我拔了一颗牙。

Yīshēng bāng wǒ bá le yī kē yá.

The doctor pulled out a tooth for me.

Tips

usage

拔牙 = pull a tooth. 拔草 = pull weeds (also internet slang for 'trying something you were tempted by'). 拔河 = tug of war.

culture

The idiom 拔苗助长 - 'pulling seedlings to help them grow' - warns against impatience. A farmer pulled his rice sprouts taller, and they all died.

Components

radical

扌 shǒu

hand radical

Left radical 扌 is the side-form of 手 (hand). It marks 拔 as a hand-action: pulling, plucking, uprooting, drawing out. The hand radical groups 拔 with the family of physical extraction verbs - 抽 (draw), 挑 (pick), 抓 (grab), 摘 (pluck).

phonetic

犮 bá

to uproot

Right phonetic 犮 supplies the sound - bá matches directly with no shift. 犮 itself is a rare standalone meaning 'a dog dashing out / something pulled free', which carries faint semantic flavour into 拔. Same phonetic appears in 跋 (bá, hike across), 茇 (bá, plant root), 钹 (bó, cymbals) - all sharing the bá/bó rime.