扑克 (pū kè) — poker (the card game); playing cards | TongTong Chinese Dictionary

Definition

noun

poker (the card game)playing cards

Measure word · 副

Examples

扑克，。
Tā xǐ huan wán pū kè, měi gè zhōu mò dōu hé péng you yì qǐ wán.
He likes to play poker, and he plays with friends every weekend.
扑克，。
Zhè fù pū kè de zhì liàng hěn hǎo, shì jìn kǒu de.
This deck of playing cards is of good quality; it's imported.
扑克，？
Wǒ bú huì dǎ pū kè, nǐ néng jiào wǒ ma?
I don't know how to play poker; can you teach me?

Origin

Single-morpheme word

构词法gòucífǎ

音译yīnyìTransliteration

The characters spell the sound of a foreign word; their individual meanings play no part.

The characters 扑 and 克 only spell the foreign sound poker and carry no meaning of their own here.

Sound-only characters

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

Meaning part形符xíngfú

手手shǒuhand

Sound part声符shēngfú

卜

卜bǔ扑pū

Same sound today

扑 uses 手 (hand) for meaning and 卜 (bǔ) for sound.

No reliable origin is recorded for this character.

Appears in

HSK 3.0 Level 7-9 Games & Puzzles

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