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

树叶落了。

Shùyè luò le.

The leaves have fallen.

太阳快落山了。

Tàiyáng kuài luòshān le.

The sun is about to set.

不要落后了！

Búyào luòhòu le!

Don't fall behind!

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.