瘙 (sào): to itch

Meanings

1 to itch
2 (old) scabies

Characters

瘙

sào

itch (medical)

Examples

皮肤瘙痒可能是过敏的症状。

Pífū sàoyǎng kěnéng shì guòmǐn de zhèngzhuàng.

Itchy skin may be a symptom of allergies.

蚊子咬了之后非常瘙痒。

Wénzi yǎo le zhīhòu fēicháng sàoyǎng.

It itches a lot after a mosquito bite.

Tips

usage

瘙 almost never appears alone in modern Chinese — it's bound to 痒 in 瘙痒 (sàoyǎng) 'to itch / itching'. In medical and dermatology contexts you'll also see 瘙痒症 'pruritus'. Taiwanese pronunciation is sometimes [sāo].

memory

The 疒 (sickness) radical on the left signals all three meanings — 瘙 is medical-itching, not casual scratching. Casual 'I want to scratch' uses 痒 (yǎng) on its own.

Components

radical

疒 nè

sickness radical

Sickness radical wrapping the top-left — pictures a sick person reclining on a bed. The indexing radical, anchoring 瘙 firmly in the disease family alongside 病, 痒, 疼, 痛. Every character capped by 疒 names something that ails the body; here it marks itching and historical scabies.

phonetic

蚤 zǎo

flea (here phonetic+semantic)

Inside 蚤 supplies the sound, drifting from zǎo to sào in an older pairing. It also pulls double duty as a faint semantic hint: fleas were a classic cause of itching, so the phonetic and the meaning reinforce each other neatly — the bug-bite itch crystallised into a character.