吸
xī HSK4

inhale

吸 xī
inhale verb
to breathe in air, smoke, or vapor

他深深地吸了一口新鲜空气。

tā shēn​shēn de xī le yī kǒu xīn​xiān kōng​qì.

He took a deep breath of fresh air.

absorb verb
to soak up liquid or attract things toward oneself

海绵可以吸很多水。

hǎi​mián kě​yǐ xī hěn​duō shuǐ.

Sponges can absorb a lot of water.

suck verb
to draw in liquid or gas through suction

小猫在吸妈妈的奶。

xiǎo māo zài xī mā​ma de nǎi.

The kitten is suckling from its mother.

Frequency
Character
Written text
924th most common 185.5 per million
Movie subtitles
578th most common 243.8 per million appears in 60% of films
Word
Movie subtitles
59.2 per million appears in 17% of films
Written text
37.4 per million

Details
HSK 2.0
Level 4
HSK 3.0
Level 4
Strokes
6
Unicode
U+5438

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