挑 (tiāo): to choose

Meanings

1 to choose
2 to pick
3 to carry on a shoulder pole
4 to nitpick

Characters

挑

tiāo

to choose; to carry on shoulder pole

Examples

HSK 1

你挑一个你喜欢的吧。

Nǐ tiāo yī ge nǐ xǐhuan de ba.

Pick one that you like.

HSK 1

她很会挑衣服。

Tā hěn huì tiāo yīfu.

She's good at picking out clothes.

HSK 7-9

农民挑着两筐蔬菜。

Nóngmín tiāo zhe liǎng kuāng shūcài.

The farmer carried two baskets of vegetables on a shoulder pole.

Tips

usage

First-tone 挑 covers two physical actions plus their figurative extensions: choosing/selecting (挑选, 挑食, 百里挑一) and carrying loads balanced on a shoulder pole (挑担子). The 'picking' sense extends to nitpicking too (挑剔, 挑错).

mistakes

Don't confuse with third-tone 挑 (to provoke / stir up / lift with a stick). The split is usually clean by compound: 挑战 and 挑拨 take tiǎo; 挑选 and 挑食 take tiāo. As a free verb in a sentence, tiāo is the choose/carry sense.

Components

radical

扌 shǒu

hand (left-side form of 手)

Hand radical on the left - the indexing semantic. 挑 covers picking, selecting, and carrying on a shoulder-pole - all done with the hand. The 扌 unifies these senses under the hand-action family alongside 拣 (pick), 选 (choose's hand-cousin), 担 (shoulder-carry), 拨 (poke aside).

phonetic

兆 zhào

omen; trillion

Right component supplies the sound: zhào shifted to tiāo / tiǎo with significant initial drift. 兆 originally pictured cracks on a heated tortoise shell read for divination omens. As a phonetic it also drives 跳 (jump), 桃 (peach), 逃 (flee) - a tao/tiao cluster sharing the same crack-pattern silhouette on the right.