Kilo Lingo

(qiú) - ball, sphere in Mandarin

qiú

Traditional: 球

Line drawing of 球
Coloured illustration of 球
#1297 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

ball, sphere

Word origin

A phono-semantic compound with the jade radical 王 on the left, since fine round objects were once carved from jade, and 求 (qiú) supplying the sound. It came to mean any ball or sphere.

Origin
phono-semantic compound
Root
王 (jade) + 求 (qiú, phonetic)

Stroke order

Stroke order for 球

Examples

The children are playing ball.

The ball rolled to the side of the road.

He threw a ball to me.

This ball was newly bought.

yuán

The Earth is round.

球 (qiú) means ball or sphere. It appears in the names of many sports such as 足球, football, and 篮球, basketball.

Where this fits

Appears in 2 words

Multi-character compounds in the corpus that contain 球.

Used in

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Mandarin · Free printables

球: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Mandarin word "球" (ball, sphere): a worksheet with the answer key built in, an infographic, and a sentence listicle. Open any one to view, print or save.

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This word is part of lesson 26.