zhāo / cháo
noun #1,194

Meanings

  1. 1 morning; daybreak
  2. 2 day

Examples

HSK 3
Niánqīng rén chōngmǎn le zhāoqì.
Young people are full of vitality.
HSK 6
Zhāoyáng cóng shān hòu shēngqǐ.
The morning sun rose from behind the mountains.
HSK 7-9
Zhāolìngxīgǎi ràng rén nányǐ gēnshàng.
Policy changed overnight makes it hard for people to keep up.

Tips

register
Mostly literary or fixed-phrase. For 'morning' in everyday speech, use 早上 or 早晨; lives in compounds - 朝阳, 朝霞, 朝气 - and in chengyu like 朝三暮四.
mistakes
Same glyph as (court/towards). Rule of thumb: if the compound is about morning, sunrise or short timespans (one day, fleeting), read ; if it's about a dynasty, government, or facing a direction, read .

Components

radical
yuè
moon
Right - also the indexing radical. The fading moon paired with the rising sun pinpoints the daybreak moment. Same radical family as and .
semantic
gàn
sun rising through grass (graphic)
Left 8-stroke stack - a picture of the sun () climbing through tall grass. This is the literal 'morning' half of the character; the zhāo reading preserves the original dawn sense.

Stroke Order

zhāo