逗
doù · HSK 7
to tease
🤭 Sounds like DOUGH — you poke and tease dough to make it stay in shape
The top component 豆 (bean) gives the sound doù. Think of kneading a ball of dough: you stop it, prod it, tease it into form. That playful poking maps to all the meanings — staying put, pausing, and amusing someone by playful teasing.
逗 — 辶 walk + 豆 bean (phonetic)
Originally a phono-semantic compound: 辶 (walk/movement) gives the meaning of stopping or lingering on a path, while 豆 supplies the sound. The early sense was 'to pause, stay, linger,' which later extended to 'tease, amuse, provoke' — the playful 'make someone stop and react' nuance still common today.