落 (luò) · to fall; to drop; to descend

Meanings

1 to fall; to drop; to descend
2 to set (of the sun); to ebb (of a tide)
3 to decline; to sink; to lag behind
4 to settle; to come to rest
5 whereabouts; settlement

Characters

落

luò

to fall; to drop; to settle

Examples

HSK 1

不要落后了！

Búyào luòhòu le!

Don't fall behind!

HSK 3

太阳快落山了。

Tàiyáng kuài luòshān le.

The sun is about to set.

HSK 7-9

树叶落了。

Shùyè luò le.

The leaves have fallen.

Tips

usage

luò is by far the most common reading and covers the full 'come down / settle' arc: physical falling (落叶), the sun setting (日落), decline (衰落), and settling down (落户). When 落 appears in a compound, default to luò unless the word is on the short list below.

mistakes

落 also reads 落 (separate entry - to leave behind, to be missing) and colloquially 落 in a handful of fixed compounds. The most common lào trap is 落枕 (waking with a stiff neck) - NOT luòzhěn. Other lào fossils (落价, 落子, 落炕) are dialectal/colloquial and rarer.

Components

radical

艹 cǎo

grass

Top grass radical, the compressed form of 草. The original sense of 落 was leaves dropping off plants - 艹 anchors that 'falling vegetation' image. Today the meaning has generalised to anything dropping (rain in 落雨, tears in 落泪, a failed exam in 落榜) but the radical still files the character under flora.

phonetic

洛 luò

Luo (river name)

Bottom 洛 supplies the sound (luò → luò, identical). 洛 is itself a phono-semantic compound (氵 water + 各 phonetic) and is best known as the Luo River - 洛阳. In 落 it functions purely as a sound stack underneath the grass radical, making this a textbook phono-semantic build.