堡 meaning and stroke order
Fort, fortress; town, village
How to write 堡, stroke by stroke
12 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 堡
Definitions from CC-CEDICT, grouped by pronunciation.
- (bound form) fortress; stronghold
- (often used to transliterate -berg, -burg etc in place names)
- (bound form) burger (abbr. for 漢堡|汉堡[han4 bao3])
- village (used in place names)
- variant of 鋪|铺[pu4]
- used in place names
How 堡 is built
Ideographic (compound meaning) character. Earthen 土 walls built for defense 保; 保 also provides the meaning.
Radical: 土 (soil), shared by 183 characters on this site.
How to remember 堡
The top part is 保 (bǎo, to protect) and the bottom is 土 (tǔ, earth). Earthen walls built to protect people make a fort, 堡 (bǎo).
堡 rarely stands alone. It appears in words like 城堡 (chéngbǎo, castle), 堡垒 (bǎolěi, fortress) and 汉堡 (hànbǎo, hamburger), and it transliterates -burg or -berg in place names. Example: 我想吃汉堡。(Wǒ xiǎng chī hànbǎo.) I want to eat a hamburger.
Common mistake: Learners often write 保 alone when they mean 堡, for example 汉保 instead of 汉堡. Remember that the fort and burger meanings need 土 at the bottom.
Common words with 堡
Ordered by HSK level, then by how often they appear in everyday Chinese.
堡 in example sentences
Real sentences from the Tatoeba project, with pinyin and English.
Questions about 堡
How many strokes are in 堡?
堡 is written with 12 strokes. The diagrams on this page number every stroke in the order it is written, with the new stroke shown in red.
What does 堡 mean?
堡 (bǎo) means fort, fortress; town, village. A common word with it is 堡垒 (bǎolěi), meaning "fort".
How do you pronounce 堡?
堡 is pronounced bǎo, in the third tone (dipping).
What is the radical of 堡?
The radical of 堡 is 土, which carries the idea of "soil". Dictionaries list 堡 under this radical.
Is 堡 on the HSK exam?
Yes. 堡 is part of the HSK 7-9 character list in the HSK 3.0 standard.
Why is 堡 used in the word for hamburger?
汉堡 (hànbǎo) is a sound loan from Hamburg, the German city, and 堡 is the standard way to render -burg. So the burger word and the fortress meaning share the same character for historical naming reasons.
Is 堡 ever pronounced bǔ or pù?
Yes, but only in some place names. It is read bǔ when it means village, as in names like 吴堡 (Wúbǔ), and pù in some names where it stands for 铺. In everyday words like 城堡 and 汉堡 it is always bǎo.