掉
diào · HSK 2
drop
📉 扌(hand) + 卓 (zhuō, table) — hand knocks something off the table, it drops
掉 (diào) means to drop, fall, or lose. The 扌 radical signals a hand action; 卓 gives the rough sound. Core senses: drop/fall (掉下), lose (掉了), reduce (掉价), and swap (掉换).
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.'