趟 (tāng): to wade (through water, mud, or…

Meanings

1 to wade (through water, mud, or tall grass)
2 to trample (a path)
3 to turn the soil (with a plow or hoe)

Characters

趟

tāng

to wade (through water, mud, or tall grass)

Examples

他趟过小溪去捡球。

Tā tāng guò xiǎoxī qù jiǎn qiú.

He waded across the stream to fetch the ball.

这件事别管，我们不趟这浑水。

Zhè jiàn shì bié guǎn, wǒmen bù tāng zhè hún shuǐ.

Don't get involved in this — we're not wading into the mess.

雨后农民下地趟土。

Yǔ hòu nóngmín xiàdì tāng tǔ.

After the rain the farmer went out to turn the soil.

Tips

usage

Three concrete senses share one core image — pushing forward through resistance: wading water, trampling brush, breaking soil with a plow. Modern writing usually picks the variant 蹚 (foot radical) for the wading sense; 趟 survives mainly in fixed expressions like 趟浑水 (wade into murky waters — get mixed up in a shady business).

register

Mostly farming and rural vocabulary today, plus the figurative 趟浑水. For the classifier sense (a trip, a train run) switch to the falling-tone reading tàng.

Components

radical

走 zǒu

to walk; to go

Walk-radical wrapping the bottom-left — the indexing radical. Every 趟 is a unit of travel by foot, train, bus, or any means. Anchors the char in the motion family with 跑 (run), 起 (rise), and 越 (cross over).

phonetic

尚 shàng

still; esteem (here phonetic)

Right 尚 supplies the sound (shàng → tàng, a coronal shift mirrored across the family: 堂, 倘, 躺). Purely phonetic — no semantic contribution; the meaning is anchored entirely by the walk radical.