嘀 (dī): (onom.) sound of dripping water, a ticking clock etc

嘀 (dī) is a Chinese character meaning “(onom.) sound of dripping water, a ticking clock etc.” Classified as HSK Level 7-9 (HSK 3.0 Standard, CLEC 2022), it is composed of 口 (semantic) and 啇 (phonetic). It ranks #3015 in character frequency (SUBTLEX-CH corpus).

Etymologically derived, 嘀 mouth. Its radical form 口 (mouth) appears in many related characters such as 口 (kǒu, mouth), 吃 (chī, to eat), 喝 (hē, to drink).

Native pronunciation
HSK 7-9Radical: 口 mouth14 strokesFrequency #3015口 semantic啇 phonetic

Definitions

  1. (onom.) sound of dripping water, a ticking clock etc

Etymology & Origin

嘀

pictophoneticmouth

Decomposition: ⿰口啇 (layout: left-right)

Components:口semantic啇phonetic

Stroke Order

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14

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

Words & Compounds

Common Compounds

WordPinyinMeaning
嘀咕dí guto mutter
嘀嗒dī dā(onom.) tick tock
犯嘀咕fàn dí guto hesitate
3
Total compounds
67
As first character
0
As last character
33
As middle character

嘀 appears in 3 compound words: 67 as the first character, 0 as the last, and 33 in a middle position. Compound statistics computed from SUBTLEX-CH and HSK 3.0 vocabulary data.

Strongest Collocations

Characters that most frequently co-occur with 嘀 in natural Chinese text, ranked by NPMI (Normalized Pointwise Mutual Information) — a statistical measure of association strength.

叭bā
0.667384 co-occurrences
咕gū
0.648294 co-occurrences
勿wù
0.41430 co-occurrences
声shēng
0.394138 co-occurrences
打dǎ
0.305108 co-occurrences
车chē
0.296102 co-occurrences
着zhe
0.28842 co-occurrences

Example Sentences

AI-Generated

他嘀干舌燥地讲了两个小时，终于说服了大家。

tā dī gān shé zào dì jiǎng le liǎng gè xiǎo shí , zhōng yú shuō fú le dà jiā .

He spoke for two hours, his throat parched, and finally managed to convince everyone.

Character Family

口 Radical Family — Characters sharing the mouth radical

啊a哎āi哀āi唉āi叭bā吧ba哺bǔ嘈cáo唱chàng嘲cháo

Related Characters

口kǒu吃chī喝hē问wèn叫jiào响xiǎng名míng吐tǔ可kě吗ma

Homophones — Characters pronounced dī

滴dī

Frequently Asked Questions

What does 嘀 (dī) mean in Chinese?
嘀 (dī) primarily means "(onom.) sound of dripping water, a ticking clock etc." It is classified as HSK Level 7-9, making it an expert-level character. It ranks #3015 in character frequency.
How many strokes does 嘀 have?
嘀 is written with 14 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 嘀?
The radical associated with 嘀 is 口 (mouth). This radical appears in many characters related to mouth.
What are the components of 嘀?
嘀 is composed of: 口 (semantic), 啇 (phonetic). Its IDS decomposition is ⿰口啇 with a left-right layout. Understanding the components helps with both memorization and recognizing related characters.
What are common words containing 嘀?
Common words with 嘀 include: 嘀咕 (dí gu, "to mutter"); 嘀嗒 (dī dā, "(onom.) tick tock"); 犯嘀咕 (fàn dí gu, "to hesitate"). There are over 3 compound words containing this character.
What characters sound the same as 嘀 (dī)?
Several characters share the pronunciation dī: 滴 (to drip). Context and tones help distinguish between them in speech and writing.
Is 嘀 the same in simplified and traditional Chinese?
Yes, 嘀 is written the same way in both simplified and traditional Chinese.

Practice writing 嘀 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.