趟 (tāng) · to wade (through water, mud, or tall grass)

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

HSK 5

雨后农民下地趟土。

Yǔhòu nóngmín xiàdì tāng tǔ.

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

HSK 7-9

他趟过小溪去捡球。

Tā tāng guò xiǎoxī qù jiǎn qiú.

He waded across the stream to fetch the ball.

HSK 7-9

这件事别管，我们不趟这浑水。

Zhè jiàn shì bié guǎn, wǒmen bù tāng zhè húnshuǐ.

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

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.