Kilo Lingo

(bǎ) - to take, handle; disposal marker in Mandarin

bǎ

Traditional: 把

Line drawing of 把
Coloured illustration of 把
HSK 2
#34 of 5,000 Core 1000

Translation

to take, handle; disposal marker

Word origin

把 is a phono-semantic compound: the hand radical 扌 indicates a grasping action, and 巴 (bā) gives the sound. Its core sense of taking hold or handling reflects the hand radical.

Origin
phono-semantic compound
Root
扌 (hand radical) + 巴 (bā, phonetic)

Stroke order

Stroke order for 把

把

Examples

。

Please close the door.

。

He put the book on the table.

。

I left my phone at home.

。

She opened the window.

。

Please throw the rubbish away.

把 (bǎ) is the marker of the "disposal construction" - one of the most important grammatical structures in Mandarin. A 把 sentence moves the object before the verb to emphasise what happens to it: 我关门 (I close the door) becomes 我把门关上 (I closed the door shut), emphasising the disposal or result affecting the object. The verb in a 把 sentence must carry a resultative or directional complement or some other element showing completion.

The character originally depicted a hand grasping a handle, and its literal meaning "handle, grip" is preserved in measure-word uses like 一把刀 (a knife, literally "one handle of knife") and 一把椅子 (a chair). This concrete meaning of grasping/handling underlies the abstract grammatical function of disposing of or doing something to an object.

Appears in 1 word

Multi-character compounds in the corpus that contain 把.

把手bǎ shǒuhandle, grip

Used in

Stories

(3)

Grammar articles

(12)

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This word is part of lesson 1.