唬 (hǔ): a tiger's roar, to scare, to intimidate

唬 (hǔ) is a Chinese character meaning “a tiger's roar.” Classified as HSK Level 7-9 (HSK 3.0 Standard, CLEC 2022), it is composed of 口 (semantic) and 虎 (phonetic). It ranks #2830 in character frequency (SUBTLEX-CH corpus).

Etymologically derived, 唬 mouth. Its radical form 口 (mouth) appears in many related characters such as 口 (kǒu, mouth), 叫 (jiào, to call, to be called), 右 (yòu, (bound form) right).

Native pronunciation
HSK 7-9Radical: 口 mouth11 strokesFrequency #2830口 semantic虎 phonetic

Definitions

  1. a tiger's roar
  2. to scare
  3. to intimidate

Etymology & Origin

唬

pictophoneticmouth

Decomposition: ⿰口虎 (layout: left-right)

Components:口semantic虎phonetic

Stroke Order

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

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

Words & Compounds

Common Compounds

WordPinyinMeaning
吓唬xià huto scare
唬人hǔ rénto scare people
诈唬zhà huto bluff
唬弄hǔ nòngto fool
唬烂hǔ làn(slang) (Tw) to bullshit
5
Total compounds
60
As first character
40
As last character
0
As middle character

唬 appears in 5 compound words: 60 as the first character, 40 as the last, and 0 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 唬 in natural Chinese text, ranked by NPMI (Normalized Pointwise Mutual Information) — a statistical measure of association strength.

吓hè
0.680730 co-occurrences
叭bā
0.46248 co-occurrences
弄nòng
0.457168 co-occurrences
喇lā
0.39348 co-occurrences
孩hái
0.350114 co-occurrences
船chuán
0.319108 co-occurrences
敌dí
0.31636 co-occurrences
旨zhǐ
0.30630 co-occurrences
我wǒ
0.284132 co-occurrences
想xiǎng
0.28287 co-occurrences

Example Sentences

AI-Generated

妈妈唬嘱我要按时吃饭，注意身体健康。

mā mā hǔ zhǔ wǒ yāo àn shí chī fàn , zhù yì shēn tī jiàn kāng .

Mom reminded me to eat on time and take care of my health.

Tatoeba

我没想吓唬汤姆的。

Wǒ méi xiǎng xiàhu Tāngmǔ de.

I didn't mean to scare Tom.

Tatoeba

我不是故意吓唬你的。

Wǒ bù shì gùyì xiàhu nǐ de.

I didn't mean to spook you.

Tatoeba

卡尔没想吓唬阿米利亚的。

Kǎ'ěr méi xiǎng xiàhu ā mǐ lì yà de.

Karl didn't mean to scare Amelia.

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叫jiào右yòu号hào吃chī同tóng名míng后hòu吗ma吧ba

Homophones — Characters pronounced hǔ

乎hū呼hū忽hū胡hú湖hú糊hú虎hǔ互hù户hù护hù

Frequently Asked Questions

What does 唬 (hǔ) mean in Chinese?
唬 (hǔ) primarily means "a tiger's roar." It is classified as HSK Level 7-9, making it an expert-level character. It ranks #2830 in character frequency.
How many strokes does 唬 have?
唬 is written with 11 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 唬?
The radical associated with 唬 is 口 (mouth). This radical appears in many characters related to mouth.
What are the components of 唬?
唬 is composed of: 口 (semantic), 虎 (phonetic). Its IDS decomposition is ⿰口虎 with a left-right layout. Understanding the components helps with both memorization and recognizing related characters.
What are common words containing 唬?
Common words with 唬 include: 吓唬 (xià hu, "to scare"); 唬人 (hǔ rén, "to scare people"); 诈唬 (zhà hu, "to bluff"); 唬弄 (hǔ nòng, "to fool"); 唬烂 (hǔ làn, "(slang) (Tw) to bullshit"). There are over 5 compound words containing this character.
What characters sound the same as 唬 (hǔ)?
Several characters share the pronunciation hǔ: 乎 ((classical particle similar to 於|于) in), 呼 (to call), 忽 (to neglect), 胡 (non-Han people, esp. from central Asia), and 6 more. Context and tones help distinguish between them in speech and writing.
Is 唬 the same in simplified and traditional Chinese?
Yes, 唬 is written the same way in both simplified and traditional Chinese.

Practice writing 唬 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.