掏 (tāo): to fish out (from a pocket or h…

Meanings

1 to fish out (from a pocket or hole)
2 to pull out; to dig out
3 to pay (colloquial)

Characters

掏

tao

to fish out; to dig out

Examples

他从口袋里掏出手机。

Tā cóng kǒudài lǐ tāo chūshǒu jī.

He fished his phone out of his pocket.

掏钱买单。

Tāoqián mǎidān.

Pay the bill.

小孩掏鸟窝。

Xiǎohái tāo niǎowō.

The kid raided a bird's nest.

他掏出一张名片递给我。

Tā tāo chū yīzhāng míngpiàn dìgěi wǒ.

He pulled out a business card and handed it to me.

Tips

usage

掏 implies reaching into a confined space (pocket, bag, hole) to pull something out. 掏钱 (tāo qián) = to pay/fork out money (colloquial). 掏腰包 (tāo yāobāo) = to pay out of one's own pocket.

memory

Hand radical 扌 + 匋 (pottery/kiln) — reaching your hand into a vessel to pull something out.

Components

radical

扌 shǒu

hand (radical form)

Left hand radical — the indexing component. Fishing things out of a pocket or hole is a hand-action. Anchors 掏 in the family of hand-reaching verbs alongside 拿 (take), 抓 (grab), 摸 (touch), 捞 (scoop). Signals: this involves a hand entering a container.

phonetic

匋 táo

pottery jar (here phonetic)

Right 匋 supplies the sound exactly: táo. 匋 itself depicts a hand reaching down toward a pottery jar — phonetic plus deep semantic alignment with "reach into a vessel." Same phonetic in 陶 (pottery), 萄 (grape), 淘 (rinse) — a tight tao-family centered on this glyph.