去掉
qù diào · HSK 6
to get rid of
🗑️ 去 go + 掉 drop — what goes and drops is removed for good
掉 on its own means to fall or drop. Paired with 去 (go), it intensifies: something doesn't just leave, it drops off completely — removed, eliminated.
去 — 土 earth on top + 厶 (originally 凵, a vessel/container) below
Originally a pictograph showing a person (大) departing from an enclosed area or vessel, suggesting leaving or going away. Over time the top simplified to 土 and the bottom to 厶. The core meaning 'to go, to leave, to depart' has remained stable since ancient Chinese.
掉 — hand radical 扌 + 卓 (zhuō, tall)
A semantic-phonetic compound: the hand radical 扌 signals a manual action, while 卓 supplies the sound (originally zhuō, later shifted to diào). The early sense was 'to swing or shake by hand,' which extended to 'drop, fall, lose,' and in modern Chinese also 'to exchange' or 'to turn around.'