燒
shāo HSK4

burn

烧 (燒) shāo
burn verb
to burn; to set on fire

野火烧不尽，春风吹又生。

yě​huǒ shāo bù jìn, chūn​fēng chuī yòu shēng.

A wildfire cannot burn them all; they grow again when the spring breeze blows.

boil verb
to heat or boil (tea, water, etc.)

水壶里的水烧开了。

shuǐ​hú lǐ de shuǐ shāo​kāi le.

The water in the kettle has boiled.

fever verb
to have a fever; to run a temperature

这孩子烧得厉害，小脸通红，得赶快去医院。

zhè hái​zi shāo de lì​hai, xiǎo liǎn tōng​hóng, děi gǎn​kuài qù yī​yuàn.

The child has a high fever and his face is flushed; we need to get him to the hospital right away.

cook verb
to cook; to stew, bake, or roast

妈妈正准备去厨房烧几道拿手的好菜。

mā​ma zhèng zhǔn​bèi qù chú​fáng shāo jǐ dào ná​shǒu de hǎo cài.

Mom is about to go to the kitchen to cook a few of her specialty dishes.

go to one's head verb
(coll.) to let things go to one's head; to be conceited or act rashly due to money or success

他挣了点钱就开始烧得不知姓什么了。

tā zhèng le diǎn qián jiù kāi​shǐ shāo de bù zhī xìng shén​me le.

He started getting so cocky after making a bit of money that he forgot who he was.

Cross-References

Has old variant

Frequency
Character
Written text
1,201st most common 114.1 per million
Movie subtitles
969th most common 110.8 per million appears in 37% of films
Word
Movie subtitles
85.5 per million appears in 24% of films
Written text
67.6 per million

Details
HSK 3.0
Level 4
Simplified
烧
Strokes
16
Unicode
U+71D2

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