搜 (sōu) · to search; to look for

Meanings

1 to search; to look for

Characters

搜

sōu

to search; to look for

Examples

HSK 2

搜一下这个词。

Sōu yíxià zhège cí.

Search for this word.

HSK 4

警察搜了他的房间。

Jǐngchá sōu le tā de fángjiān.

The police searched his room.

HSK 5

在网上搜相关资料很方便。

Zài wǎngshàng sōu xiāngguān zīliào hěn fāngbiàn.

It's convenient to search for relevant material online.

Tips

usage

搜 is the informal short form commonly used in daily speech. 搜索 is the more complete/formal version. In Chinese internet slang, '搜一下' is like saying 'Google it.'

Components

radical

扌 shǒu

hand (radical form)

Left hand radical - simplified 3-stroke form of 手. The indexing radical. Searching is a manual rummaging action, so the hand is literal. Same radical heads 找, 拿, 抓, 摸 - the family of hand-driven verbs that also includes 搜's near-synonym 找 'look for'.

phonetic

叟 sǒu

old man; elder

Right component supplies the sound (sǒu → sōu, just a tone shift). 叟 itself shows a hand 又 holding a torch under a 宀-like roof - an elder lighting a search of the house, which is sometimes read as a faint semantic echo of 'searching by torchlight'. Same phonetic in 嗖, 飕, 馊.