Kilo Lingo

(xiào) - to laugh, to smile in Mandarin

xiào

Traditional: 笑

Line drawing of 笑
Coloured illustration of 笑
HSK 2
#464 of 5,000 Core 1000

Translation

to laugh, to smile

Word origin

The character 笑 (xiào) 'to laugh, to smile' carries the 竹 'bamboo' radical above; the lower component is variously analysed and the link between bamboo and laughter is debated, so the breakdown below is conservative.

Origin
phono-semantic compound
Root
竹 (bamboo radical) + 夭 (lower component)

Stroke order

Stroke order for 笑

Examples

He laughed happily.

Please don't laugh at me.

Her smile is lovely.

The children all laughed when they heard it.

笑 (xiào) - to laugh, to smile.

Appears in 3 words

Multi-character compounds in the corpus that contain 笑.

Used in

Add to review queue

Track this word in your spaced-repetition queue and be tested on it at the right interval.

Go to my review queue

This word is part of lesson 10.