verb #22,395

Meanings

  1. 1 to dispel
  2. 2 to drive away
  3. 3 to eliminate (illness, evil, cold)

Examples

HSK 7-9
Zhèzhǒng zhōngyào kěyǐ qū tán zhǐké.
This herbal medicine can dispel phlegm and relieve coughing.
HSK 7-9
Hē jiāngtāng kěyǐ qū fēng sàn hán.
Drinking ginger soup can dispel wind and drive out the cold.

Tips

usage
is primarily a Traditional Chinese Medicine term. Common compounds: 祛痰 (to expel phlegm), 祛风 (to dispel wind/chill), 祛湿 (to remove dampness), 祛寒 (to drive out cold). It is rarely used outside medical or herbal contexts.

Components

radical
shì
spirit; altar (radical form of 示)
Left altar radical, side-form of , picturing a stone altar where offerings were laid for the spirits. originally meant a ritual driving off evil or disease, so the spirit-altar root tags it as religious action. Same family: sacrifice, blessing, spirit.
phonetic
to leave; to go away
Right supplies the sound; qù drifts to qū with tone change. also pulls semantic weight: it means 'to remove, send away,' which fits the dispel-and-banish core of perfectly. A neat phono-semantic compound where the phonetic is also conceptually aligned.

Stroke Order