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炮

páo / pào
verb #6,148

Meanings

  1. 1 (traditional Chinese medicine) to prepare herbs by roasting or parching in a pan
  2. 2 to process (medicinal materials) by dry heat

Examples

HSK 7-9
传统药店按照古法严格炮制药材。
Chuántǒng yàodiàn ànzhào gǔfǎ yángé páozhì yàocái.
Traditional pharmacists roast and process herbs strictly according to ancient methods.
HSK 7-9
他凭空炮制了一段假历史来欺骗读者。
Tā píngkōng páozhì le yī duàn jiǎ lìshǐ lái qīpiàn dúzhě.
He fabricated a fake history out of thin air to deceive his readers.
HSK 7-9
炮烙之刑被记载为商纣王使用的最残酷刑罚。
Páoluò zhī xíng bèi jìzǎi wéi Shāng Zhòuwáng shǐyòng de zuì cánkù xíngfá.
The burning-pillar torture is recorded as the cruelest punishment used by King Zhou of Shang.

Tips

history
The páo reading preserves the original sense of the character: a cooking/roasting method in which food (or, later, herbs) is wrapped and dry-heated. From Han times this method became standard in Chinese medicine - soaking, drying, frying, calcining herbs to change their properties. Today 炮制 has split into two readings of its own: the literal "to roast-process herbs" and the figurative "to concoct / fabricate (fake news, a forged document, a hatchet job)" - both pronounced páozhì.
register
Use páo in only two settings: TCM (炮制 preparing herbs, 炮炼 refining herbs) and the historical/literary 炮烙 torture image. Everything modern and military - cannons, firecrackers, slang - stays pào.

Components

radical
火 huǒ
fire
Fire radical on the left makes the meaning explicit: anything explosive or igniting. It indexes 炮 in the fire-and-burst family alongside 烧 to burn, 烟 smoke, 爆 to explode. Originally 炮 named a roasting method (wrapping meat in clay and burning it); the cannon and firecracker senses came later as the fire-image broadened.
phonetic
包 bāo
to wrap; bundle
Right is 包 'to wrap', supplying the sound - bāo drifting to pào with tone shift and regular b/p alternation (e.g. 跑, 抱). 包 also leaks meaning since the original 炮 wrapped food in clay before roasting. Modern compounds keep the wrap-and-burst image: 鞭炮 firecracker (wrapped charge), 大炮 cannon (wrapped powder).

Stroke Order

炮 páo