墜 meaning and stroke order
To drop, to fall down, to sink; heavy; weight
How to write 墜, stroke by stroke
14 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 墜
Definitions from CC-CEDICT, grouped by pronunciation.
- to fall
- to drop
- to weigh down
How 墜 is built
Phono-semantic (sound + meaning) character. Earth.
土 gives the meaning and 隊 hints at the sound.
Radical: 土 (soil), shared by 183 characters on this site.
How to remember 墜
墜 is built from 隊 (duì), which gives the sound, sitting on top of 土 (tǔ, earth). Picture a whole team 隊 tumbling down until they land on the earth 土 below.
墜 (zhuì) is the traditional form. Simplified Chinese writes it 坠, which is what you see in the common words. It describes things falling from a height, often heavily or dramatically, and appears mostly in compounds like 坠落 (zhuìluò) and 坠毁 (zhuìhuǐ). Example: 飞机坠毁了。(Fēijī zhuìhuǐ le.) The plane crashed.
Common mistake: Learners sometimes read 墜 as duì because of the phonetic part 隊, but the correct reading is zhuì with a fourth tone. Also do not confuse it with 堕 (duò), which also means to fall but leans toward moral or figurative falling, as in 堕落 (duòluò, to degenerate).
Common words with 墜
Ordered by HSK level, then by how often they appear in everyday Chinese.
Questions about 墜
How many strokes are in 墜?
墜 is written with 14 strokes. The diagrams on this page number every stroke in the order it is written, with the new stroke shown in red.
What does 墜 mean?
墜 (zhuì) means to drop, to fall down, to sink; heavy; weight. A common word with it is 摇摇欲坠 (yáoyáo-yùzhuì), meaning "tottering; on the verge of collapse".
How do you pronounce 墜?
墜 is pronounced zhuì, in the fourth tone (falling).
What is the radical of 墜?
The radical of 墜 is 土, which carries the idea of "soil". Dictionaries list 墜 under this radical.
What is the simplified form of 墜?
墜 is a traditional character. Its simplified form is 坠, used in mainland China and Singapore.
What is the difference between 坠 (zhuì) and 掉 (diào)?
掉 is the everyday spoken word for dropping something, like 手机掉了 (my phone fell). 坠 sounds more formal or written and suggests falling from a height, so it is used for planes, meteors, or people falling off cliffs.
Can 坠 be used as a noun?
Yes. It can mean a hanging ornament or weight, as in 耳坠 (ěrzhuì, earring) or 坠子 (zhuìzi, pendant). This connects to the sense of something heavy that hangs down.