抖
doǔ · HSK 7
to tremble
🫨 DOUbt makes you tremble — doǔ sounds like doubt
When you're full of doubt, your hands shake and your voice quivers. The character 抖 has the hand radical 扌 on the left — trembling is something your hands do. Dou rhymes with doubt, and doubt makes you shaky.
抖 — hand radical 扌 + 斗 dǒu (dipper)
A semantic-phonetic compound. The hand radical 扌 gives the meaning — actions done with the hand like shaking or trembling — while 斗 (a ladle/dipper) supplies the sound. Originally 'to shake out' (as one shakes a dipper), it extended to shivering, trembling, and rousing oneself.