掉队
diào duì · HSK 7
to drop out
🐢 DIAO DUI = drop + team — you dropped off the team
掉 means to fall or drop, 队 means team or group. Together: to drop from the group, i.e. fall behind or drop out of formation.
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.'
队 — 阝(mound) + 㒸 (phonetic, suì)
Originally written 隊, depicting people falling from a mound (阝). The early sense was 'to fall down,' later borrowed for 'a group' or 'team' descending or marching together. The simplified form 队 keeps the mound radical 阝 but replaces the right side with 人 (person), suggesting people gathered in a line.