着 (zhuó): to wear (clothing)

Meanings

1 to wear (clothing)
2 to apply; to put on (color, ink, effort)
3 to come into contact; to touch; to attach to
4 whereabouts; a settled outcome

Characters

着

zhuó

to wear (clothing)

Examples

他穿着整齐。

Tā chuān zhuó zhěngqí.

His attire is neat.

我们着手解决这个问题。

Wǒmen zhuó shǒu jiějué zhège wèntí.

We're getting started on this problem.

飞机安全着陆了。

Fēijī ānquán zhuó lù le.

The plane landed safely.

Tips

usage

zhuó (rising tone) is the literary/written reading — it shows up mostly in compounds, rarely as a standalone word. Productive families: clothing-and-appearance (穿着, 着装, 衣着), contact-and-attachment (附着, 着陆, 着床), focus-and-emphasis (着重, 着眼, 着手), and settled-outcome (着落).

mistakes

Easy slip: 穿着 'wearing (right now)' uses toneless zhe (aspect particle); 穿着 'attire (noun)' uses zhuó. Same characters, different reading, different word. Pick by whether you mean the ongoing action or the noun for clothing.

Components

radical

目 mù

eye

The eye radical (Kangxi 109) is the indexing component. On the zhuó reading the original sense — 'fixing one's eye on, attaching to' — drove the modern meanings: putting clothing onto the body, applying ink to paper, landing onto the ground, focusing attention on a topic. The same character 着 also reads 着 (aspect particle), 着 ('to catch') and 着 ('a chess move').

semantic

羊 yáng

sheep (graphic only)

Looks like 羊 but is the cursive residue of 艹 over 者 from the original 著. Graphic placeholder only, no meaning contribution.