挑
tiāotiǎo HSK4

carry on the shoulder, pick

挑 tiāo frequency
choose verb
to select or pick out from a group

我从这些苹果里挑了几个红的。

wǒ cóng zhè​xiē píng​guǒ lǐ tiāo le jǐ gè hóng de.

I picked out a few red ones from these apples.

nitpick verb
to find fault with or criticize small details

他总是喜欢挑别人的毛病。

tā zǒng​shì xǐ​huan tiāo bié​ren de máo​bìng.

He always likes to pick on others' faults.

carry on pole verb
to carry something on a shoulder pole

他挑着一担水到厨房去。

tā tiāo zhe yī dàn shuǐ dào chú​fáng qù.

He carried a load of water to the kitchen on a shoulder pole.

挑 tiǎo
poke verb
to raise, dig up, or prick using the tip of an object

他用牙签挑出了一块肉。

tā yòng yá​qiān tiǎo chū le yī kuài ròu.

He picked out a piece of meat with a toothpick.

incite verb
to stir up, provoke, or instigate conflict or emotions

他喜欢在中间挑事，让大家都不开心。

tā xǐ​huan zài zhōng​jiān tiǎo​shì, ràng dà​jiā dōu bù kāi​xīn.

He likes to stir up trouble and make everyone unhappy.

Frequency
Character
Written text
1,309th most common 95.2 per million
Movie subtitles
928th most common 121.1 per million appears in 41% of films
Word
Movie subtitles
50.4 per million appears in 19% of films
Written text
41.6 per million

Details
HSK 2.0
Level 5
HSK 3.0
Level 4
Strokes
9
Unicode
U+6311

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