垢 meaning and stroke order
Dirt, filth, stains; dirty; disgraceful
How to write 垢, stroke by stroke
9 strokes in order. Each box adds the next stroke in red. Write top to bottom and left to right, and finish enclosing strokes last.
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Meaning of 垢
Definitions from CC-CEDICT, grouped by pronunciation.
- dirt
- disgrace
How 垢 is built
Phono-semantic (sound + meaning) character. Earth.
土 gives the meaning and 后 hints at the sound.
Radical: 土 (soil), shared by 183 characters on this site.
How to remember 垢
垢 combines 土 (earth) for meaning with 后 (hòu) as a sound hint. Picture the dirt (土) that builds up behind (后) your ears when you forget to wash.
垢 (gòu) means grime or built-up dirt, and it mostly appears in compounds rather than alone. It is common in words about cleaning, such as 污垢 (wūgòu) and 水垢 (shuǐgòu, limescale). Example: 水壶里有很多水垢。(Shuǐhú lǐ yǒu hěn duō shuǐgòu.) There is a lot of limescale in the kettle.
Common mistake: Learners often read 垢 as hòu because of the phonetic part 后, but the correct reading is gòu with a falling fourth tone. Also do not confuse it with 坵 or 诟 (gòu, to scold), which shares the sound but uses the speech radical 讠.
Common words with 垢
Ordered by HSK level, then by how often they appear in everyday Chinese.
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning | Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| 污垢 | wūgòu | dirt; filth; grime |
垢 in example sentences
Real sentences from the Tatoeba project, with pinyin and English.
Questions about 垢
How many strokes are in 垢?
垢 is written with 9 strokes. The diagrams on this page number every stroke in the order it is written, with the new stroke shown in red.
What does 垢 mean?
垢 (gòu) means dirt, filth, stains; dirty; disgraceful. A common word with it is 污垢 (wūgòu), meaning "dirt; filth; grime".
How do you pronounce 垢?
垢 is pronounced gòu, in the fourth tone (falling).
What is the radical of 垢?
The radical of 垢 is 土, which carries the idea of "soil". Dictionaries list 垢 under this radical.
What is the difference between 垢 and 脏?
脏 (zāng) is the everyday adjective for dirty, as in 衣服很脏 (the clothes are dirty). 垢 is a noun for the grime itself and is more written or technical. You would say 去除污垢 (remove grime), not use 垢 as a simple adjective.
How is 垢 used in a figurative sense?
In literary Chinese, 垢 can mean shame or disgrace, as in the idiom 忍辱含垢 (rěn rǔ hán gòu), to endure humiliation. Another set phrase is 藏污纳垢 (cáng wū nà gòu), describing a place that harbors bad people or wrongdoing.