缩
suō HSK4

contract

缩 (縮) suō
withdraw verb
to pull back or draw back a body part or an object

蜗牛受惊时会把身体缩进壳里。

wō​niú shòu​jīng shí huì bǎ shēn​tǐ suō jìn ké lǐ.

A snail retracts its body into its shell when it's startled.

shrink verb
to contract or become smaller in size or volume, especially of fabric or materials

这件毛衣洗过之后缩了一圈。

zhè jiàn máo​yī xǐ guo zhī​hòu suō le yī quān.

This sweater shrank after being washed.

abbreviation noun
a shortened form of a word or phrase, or the act of shortening a term

“北京大学”常被缩称为“北大”。

“ Běi​jīng dà​xué” cháng bèi suō chēng​wéi“ Běi Dà”.

'Peking University' is often abbreviated as 'Beida'.

reduce verb
to decrease or cut down in scale, amount, or duration

为了节省成本，公司不得不缩减预算。

wèi​le jié​shěng chéng​běn, gōng​sī bù​dé​bù suō jiǎn yù​suàn.

To save costs, the company had to cut its budget.

Frequency
Character
Written text
1,304th most common 95.6 per million
Movie subtitles
1,596th most common 37.1 per million appears in 19% of films
Word
Movie subtitles
6.89 per million appears in 3% of films
Written text
21.2 per million

Details
HSK 2.0
Level 5
HSK 3.0
Level 4
Traditional
縮
Strokes
14
Unicode
U+7F29

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