帛 (bó): silk

帛 (bó) is a Chinese character meaning “silk.” Outside the HSK 3.0 syllabus (CLEC 2022), it is composed of 白 (phonetic) and 巾 (semantic). It ranks #4598 in character frequency (SUBTLEX-CH corpus).

Etymologically derived, 帛 cloth. Its radical form 巾 (cloth) appears in many related characters such as 常 (cháng, always), 希 (xī, to hope), 帮 (bāng, to help).

Spoken pronunciation
Radical: 巾 cloth8 strokesFrequency #4598白 phonetic巾 semantic

Definitions

  1. silk

Etymology & Origin

帛

pictophoneticcloth

Decomposition: ⿱白巾 (layout: top-bottom)

Components:白phonetic巾semantic

Stroke Order

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Practice writing 帛 with real-time feedback — trace each stroke in the correct order and build muscle memory in the HanziFeed app.

Words & Compounds

Common Compounds

WordPinyinMeaning
化干戈为玉帛phrasehuà gān gē wéi yù bólit. to exchange weapons of war for gifts of jade and silk (idiom)
帛金nounbó jīn(HK, Singapore) money gift at a funeral
布帛nounbù bócloth and silk
财帛nouncái bówealth
帛画nounbó huàpainting on silk
布帛菽粟phrasebù bó shū sù(lit.) cloth, silk, beans and grain (idiom)
竹帛zhú bóbamboo and silk writing materials (before paper)
帛琉proper-nounbó liú(Tw) Palau
8
Total compounds
38
As first character
50
As last character
13
As middle character

帛 appears in 8 compound words: 38 as the first character, 50 as the last, and 13 in a middle position. Compound statistics computed from SUBTLEX-CH and HSK 3.0 vocabulary data.

Idioms & Chengyu (1)

布帛菽粟bùbóshūsù

food and clothing; daily necessities

phrase

Example Sentences

AI-Generated

这个帛字在古汉语中有不同的含义。

zhè gè bó zì zài gǔ hàn yǔ zhōng yǒu bù tóng de hán yì .

In Classical Chinese, the character "帛" has different meanings.

Character Family

Semantic Family — Characters sharing the 巾 (cloth) component

常cháng幕mù帐zhàng饰shì帽mào帆fān幢chuáng帧zhēn帜zhì幔màn

Related Characters

常cháng希xī帮bāng带dài帽mào巾jīn帜zhì帝dì师shī市shì

Homophones — Characters pronounced bó

伯bó泊bó舶bó

Frequently Asked Questions

What does 帛 (bó) mean in Chinese?
帛 (bó) primarily means "silk." It is not part of the HSK 3.0 syllabus. It ranks #4598 in character frequency.
What's the difference between 帛 and 百?
帛 (bó) and 百 (bǎi) are often confused. confusable. The key distinguishing feature: 巾 vs 白 (same 白 component).
How many strokes does 帛 have?
帛 is written with 8 strokes. The correct stroke order matters for recognition and handwriting speed — practice with the animated guide above to build proper technique.
What is the radical of 帛?
The radical associated with 帛 is 巾 (cloth). This radical appears in many characters related to cloth.
What are the components of 帛?
帛 is composed of: 白 (phonetic), 巾 (semantic). Its IDS decomposition is ⿱白巾 with a top-bottom layout. Understanding the components helps with both memorization and recognizing related characters.
What are common words containing 帛?
Common words with 帛 include: 化干戈为玉帛 (huà gān gē wéi yù bó, "lit. to exchange weapons of war for gifts of jade and silk (idiom)"); 帛金 (bó jīn, "(HK, Singapore) money gift at a funeral"); 布帛 (bù bó, "cloth and silk"); 财帛 (cái bó, "wealth"); 帛画 (bó huà, "painting on silk"). There are over 8 compound words containing this character.
What characters sound the same as 帛 (bó)?
Several characters share the pronunciation bó: 伯 (father's elder brother), 泊 (to moor (a boat)), 舶 (ship). Context and tones help distinguish between them in speech and writing.
Is 帛 the same in simplified and traditional Chinese?
Yes, 帛 is written the same way in both simplified and traditional Chinese.

Practice writing 帛 with real-time feedback

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Character data sourced from Unihan (Unicode Consortium), SUBTLEX-CH frequency corpus (Cai & Brysbaert, 2010), and Make Me a Hanzi (stroke data). Collocation strength measured via NPMI (Normalized Pointwise Mutual Information). Verified by the HanziFeed linguistics team.

HSK classification follows the HSK 3.0 Standard (Center for Language Education and Cooperation, CLEC, 2022 revision). Idiom data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Data last verified: March 2026.