虎
Tap the pinyin to hear it
tiger; CL:隻|只[zhi1]
- HSK 3.0
- Level 5
- Old HSK
- Level 4
- Strokes
- 8
- Radical
- 虍 +2
- Structure
- Upper-left enclosure 左上包
- Traditional
- 虎
- Common rank
- #456
- Unicode
- U+864E
Sound it out + =
Formation & memory
Break the character into parts you already know.
How 虎 is formed
Ideographic compound (会意字)
A tiger 虍 standing on a rock 几; 虍 also provides the pronunciation
How to remember it
tiger · Heisig RSH #1459
magic wand + diced + wind + zoo — as a component also called: tiger
Keyword method from Heisig's Remembering Simplified Hanzi.
Words with 虎
The most common words first — learning a character in context makes it stick.
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 三人成虎 | three men talking makes a tiger (idiom); repeated rumor becomes a fact | |
| 打马虎眼 | to play dumb; to slack off (idiom) | |
| 虎不拉 | (dialect) shrike; Taiwan pr. [hu3 bu5 la1] | |
| 老虎机 | slot machine | |
| 电老虎 | electricity hog; electricity guzzler | |
| 一山不容二虎 | lit. the mountain can't have two tigers (idiom); fig. this town ain't big enough for the t… | |
| 虎字头 | name of "tiger" radical in Chinese characters (Kangxi radical 141); see also 虍[hu1] | |
| 虎毒不食子 | a tiger, though cruel, will not devour its cubs (idiom); even wild beasts look after their… | |
| 虎林市 | Hulin, a county-level city in Jixi City 雞西市|鸡西市[Ji1 xi1 Shi4], Heilongjiang | |
| 水虎鱼 | piranha (fish) | |
| 吃角子老虎 | slot machine | |
| 生龙活虎 | lit. lively dragon and animated tiger (idiom); fig. vigorous and lively | |
| 虎子 | tiger cub; brave young man | |
| 拉大旗作虎皮 | lit. to wave a banner as if it were a tiger skin (idiom); fig. to borrow sb's prestige; to… | |
| 马虎 | careless; sloppy; negligent; skimpy | |
| 马马虎虎 | careless; casual; vague; not so bad; so-so; tolerable; fair | |
| 东北虎 | Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) | |
| 白虎 | White Tiger (the seven mansions of the west sky); (slang) hairless female genitalia | |
| 明知山有虎，偏向虎山行 | lit. to willfully go towards the mountain although knowing that it has tigers (idiom); fig… | |
| 油老虎 | gas guzzler |
Sound family
These characters use 虎 as their sound component — compare how they read.
| Character | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 虎 sound part | tiger; brave, fierce; surname | |
| 唬 | to intimidate; to scare |