逮 (dài): to reach; to attain

Meanings

1 to reach; to attain
2 to apprehend (formal, in 逮捕)

Characters

逮

dài

to reach; to attain

Examples

警方依法逮捕了嫌疑人。

Jǐngfāng yīfǎ dàibǔ le xiányírén.

The police arrested the suspect according to the law.

法院签发了逮捕令。

Fǎyuàn qiānfā le dàibǔlìng.

The court issued an arrest warrant.

Tips

register

dài is the formal/literary reading. By far the most common modern use is the compound 逮捕 dàibǔ 'to arrest', a legal-register word that appears in news, court documents, and police reporting. The bare verb sense ('to reach, to attain') survives in classical phrases like 力有不逮 lìyǒubùdài 'one's ability falls short'.

mistakes

Mainland standard reads 逮捕 as dàibǔ; Taiwan speakers often say dǎibǔ in everyday speech. Both are accepted, but dàibǔ is the dictionary form.

Components

radical

辶 chuò

walk; movement (radical form)

Walking radical — adds the motion sense. To reach (dài) is to travel until you arrive at the thing. Same radical family covers other arrival/motion verbs like 达 (arrive), 进 (advance), 追 (chase).

semantic

隶 lì

slave; reach to

Inner 隶 originally pictured a hand grasping a tail — taking hold of someone. The 'reach to / attain' sense of the dài reading comes directly from this graspable-from-here image: to reach across and lay a hand on something.