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

你挑一个你喜欢的吧。

Nǐ tiāo yī ge nǐ xǐhuan de ba.

Pick one that you like.

她很会挑衣服。

Tā hěn huì tiāo yīfu.

She's good at picking out clothes.

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 (here phonetic)

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.