靠
kào HSK2

lean on

靠 kào
to depend on verbpreposition
to rely on; to depend on for help, support, or a living

我们现在靠写信与他保持联系。

wǒ​men xiàn​zài kào xiě xìn yǔ tā bǎo​chí lián​xì.

We now keep in touch with him by writing letters.

我只能靠嘴巴呼吸。

wǒ zhǐ​néng kào zuǐ​ba hū​xī.

I can only breathe through my mouth.

to get near verbpreposition
to come near to; to be next to; to keep to (a side); to pull up or dock (a boat)

他靠得太近了。

tā kào de tài jìn le.

He's getting too close.

15个亚洲国家靠左行驶。

15 ge yà​zhōu guó​jiā kào zuǒ xíng​shǐ.

15 Asian nations drive on the left.

to trust verb
to trust; to be reliable; to be trustworthy

我就知道你靠得住。

wǒ jiù zhī​dao nǐ kào de zhù.

I knew I could count on you.

to lean against verb
to lean against or on; to rest your body on something for support; to prop an object up against something

把你的头靠在我身上。

bǎ nǐ de tóu kào zài wǒ shēn​shang.

Rest your head on me.

[profanity]
(slang) to fuck; a vulgar exclamation equivalent to "shit" or "damn"
stage armor
(bound form) traditional military costume worn by warriors in Chinese opera, representing armor

Frequency
Character
Written text
808th most common 222.2 per million
Movie subtitles
666th most common 200.9 per million appears in 63% of films
Word
Movie subtitles
175.6 per million appears in 45% of films
Written text
183.0 per million

Details
HSK 2.0
Level 5
HSK 3.0
Level 2
Strokes
15
Unicode
U+9760

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