靠
kào HSK2

lean on

靠 kào
depend on verb
to depend on; to trust; to rely upon

凡事只能靠自己。

fán shì zhǐ néng kào zì​jǐ.

One can only depend on oneself for everything.

lean verb
to lean against or on; to stand by the side of; to come near to

他靠在墙边休息。

tā kào zài qiáng biān xiū​xi.

He leaned against the wall to rest.

armor costume noun
traditional military costume used in Chinese opera where the performers wear armor

演员在台上披挂着一身大靠。

yǎn​yuán zài tái shàng pī​guà zhe yī shēn dà kào.

The actor wore full stage armor on stage.

fuck expression
to fuck (vulgar)

我靠！你吓死我了！

wǒ​kào! nǐ xià​sǐ wǒ le!

Holy cow! You scared me to death!

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