口吃 (kǒu chī) — to stammer; to stutter | TongTong Chinese Dictionary

Definition

verb

to stammerto stutter

Examples

口吃。
Tā shuō huà shí zǒng shì kǒu chī.
He always stammers when speaking.
口吃。
Wǒ xiǎo shí hou kǒu chī dé hěn lì hài.
I stuttered badly when I was a child.
，口吃。
Jīng guò zhì liáo, tā de kǒu chī wèn tí gǎi shàn le hěn duō.
After treatment, his stuttering problem improved a lot.

Origin

Compound word

构词法gòucífǎ

主谓zhǔwèiSubject + predicate

A small sentence frozen into a word: something, and what it does or is.

吃chīstammer

口 (mouth) and 吃 (stammer) picture the mouth stuttering.

Characters in this word

A drawing of the thing itself, worn down over three thousand years into a few strokes.

The form 口 looks like an open mouth.

Most characters — around four in five — are built this way: one part hints at the meaning, the other at the pronunciation.

口乞吃

Meaning part形符xíngfú

口口kǒumouth

Sound part声符shēngfú

乞

乞qǐ吃chī

Close in sound todayThe sound part was a clue two thousand years ago — it often still helps, but not always.

吃 combines 口 (mouth) with 乞, which gives the sound; it originally wrote a word meaning to stutter.

Appears in

HSK 3.0 Level 7-9 Illness & Symptoms

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