贪
Tap the pinyin to hear it
to have a voracious desire for; to covet; greedy; corrupt
- HSK 3.0
- Level 7–9
- Old HSK
- Level 6
- Strokes
- 8
- Radical
- 貝 +4
- Structure
- Top–bottom 上下
- Traditional
- 貪
- Common rank
- #1,607
- Unicode
- U+8D2A
Sound it out + =
Formation & memory
Break the character into parts you already know.
Words with 贪
The most common words first — learning a character in context makes it stick.
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 贪小失大 | penny wise and pound foolish (idiom) | |
| 贪心不足 | avaricious and insatiable (idiom); greedy and never satisfied | |
| 贪天之功 | to claim credit for other people's achievements (idiom) | |
| 起早贪黑 | to be industrious, rising early and going to bed late | |
| 好酒贪杯 | fond of the bottle (idiom) | |
| 贪生怕死 | greedy for life, afraid of death (idiom); craven and cowardly; clinging abjectly to life; … | |
| 贪心 | greedy | |
| 贪得无厌 | avaricious and insatiable (idiom); greedy and never satisfied | |
| 贪吃鬼 | glutton; chowhound | |
| 贪色 | greedy for sex; given to lust for women | |
| 贪玩儿 | erhua variant of 貪玩|贪玩[tan1 wan2] | |
| 反贪 | anti-corruption (policy) | |
| 贪嘴 | gluttonous | |
| 贪求无厌 | insatiably greedy (idiom) | |
| 贪食 | gluttonous; greedy | |
| 贪图 | to covet; to seek (riches, fame) | |
| 反贪腐 | anti-corruption | |
| 贪官 | corrupt official; grasping functionary; greedy mandarin | |
| 贪吃 | gluttonous; voracious | |
| 贪污腐化 | (idiom) corruption |
Sound family
Characters sharing the sound component 今 — compare how they read.
| Character | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 今 sound part | modern, current; today, now | |
| 含 | to hold in the mouth; to contain; to cherish | |
| 吟 | to sing, to hum; to recite; a type of poetry | |
| 黔 | black; the Guizhou province | |
| 岑 | steep, precipitous; peak | |
| 矜 | to pity, to sympathize, to feel sorry for | |
| 衾 | quilt, coverlet | |
| 妗 | mother's brother's wife | |
| 侌 | old variant of 陰|阴[yin1] | |
| 芩 | salt-marsh plant | |
| 衿 | collar, lapel | |
| 钤 | lock, latch; to stamp, to seal |