砸

zá
verb HSK 7-9 #955

Meanings

  1. 1 to smash
  2. 2 to pound
  3. 3 to break
  4. 4 to fail

Examples

HSK 2
Zhècì kǎoshì zá le.
I bombed this exam.
HSK 7-9
Tā yì quán zásuì le chuānghu de bōli.
He smashed the window glass with one punch.

Tips

usage
砸 can mean physically smashing something, but colloquially it also means to mess up or fail at something (砸了 = 'blew it').

Components

radical
石 shí
stone; rock
Left stone radical - the indexing semantic. Smashing involves a heavy rock-like force dropped or swung onto a target. The radical correctly tags 砸 in the stone-impact family alongside 破 (break), 砍 (chop), 碎 (shatter), 碰 (collide). The colloquial 'to fail/bomb' sense extends from 'the result smashed flat'.
phonetic
匝 zā
to encircle; one revolution
Right component supplies the sound (zā → zá, tone shift only). 匝 by itself means 'one full circuit, to encircle'. The encircling imagery dovetails neatly with the swinging arc of a hammer - phonetic with a faint mnemonic echo of rotational impact.

Stroke Order

砸 zá