Kilo Lingo

(pāi) - to clap, to pat; to take (a photo/video) in Mandarin

pāi

Traditional: 拍

Line drawing of 拍
Coloured illustration of 拍
HSK 4
#560 of 5,000 Core 1000

Translation

to clap, to pat; to take (a photo/video)

Word origin

拍 (pāi) is a phono-semantic compound built from 扌, the hand radical, and 白 (bái) supplying the sound. The hand radical fits the core sense of striking or patting with the hand, later extended to clapping and to taking a photograph.

Origin
phono-semantic compound
Root
扌(hand radical) + 白 (bái, phonetic)

Stroke order

Stroke order for 拍

Examples

Everyone clap your hands together!

Let me take a photo for you.

jiānbǎng

He gently patted my shoulder.

jiānbǎng

He patted my shoulder.

She is taking photos.

拍 (pāi) means to clap, to pat, or to slap lightly. Extended to photography and film it means to shoot or take a picture: 拍照 (take a photo), 拍电影 (shoot a film), 拍视频 (shoot a video). The gesture of patting someone on the shoulder (拍肩膀) is a common comfort or encouragement action. 拍 reduplication 拍拍 conveys a gentle, repeated patting action.

Appears in 1 word

Multi-character compounds in the corpus that contain 拍.

Used in

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This word is part of lesson 12.