刺
cìcī HSK4

stab

刺 cì frequency
to prick verb
to stab; to prick; to pierce; to thrust into

那水兵在手臂上刺上一颗心。

nà shuǐ​bīng zài shǒu​bì shang cì shàng yī kē xīn.

The sailor had a heart tattooed on his arm.

to irritate verbadjective
to irritate or stimulate unpleasantly; to sting
to criticize nounverb
to criticize; to mock; to ridicule with sharp words
thorn noun
a small, sharp, pointed object such as a thorn, splinter, or fish bone

我手指上扎了一根刺。

wǒ shǒu​zhǐ shang zhā le yī gēn cì.

I got a splinter in my finger.

例如，玫瑰是美丽的，但它们有刺。

lì​rú, méi​gui shì měi​lì de, dàn tā​men yǒu cì.

Roses, for example, are beautiful, but they have thorns.

to spy verb
to scout; to spy on; to secretly find out information
to assassinate
to assassinate or murder by stabbing
business card
(literary) visiting card; business card
surname
a Chinese surname
stingray
a stingray (cartilaginous fish of the order Myliobatiformes)
刺 cī
[onomatopoeia]
sound of tearing, friction, skidding, or whooshing

Cross-References

Has erhua variant

Has old variant

Frequency
Character
Written text
1,058th most common 144.1 per million
Movie subtitles
1,016th most common 102.9 per million appears in 40% of films
Word
Movie subtitles
43.2 per million appears in 13% of films
Written text
36.6 per million

Details
HSK 2.0
Level 5
HSK 3.0
Level 4
Strokes
8
Unicode
U+523A

Sources
Frequency data
MTSU Chinese text computingSUBTLEX-CHBCC Corpus (BLCU)