猾 (huá): sly

猾 (huá) is a Chinese character meaning “sly.” Classified as HSK Level 7-9 (HSK 3.0 Standard, CLEC 2022), it is composed of 犭 (semantic) and 骨 (phonetic). It ranks #2786 in character frequency (SUBTLEX-CH corpus).

Etymologically derived, 猾 dog. Its radical form 犭 (dog) appears in many related characters such as 狗 (gǒu, dog), 猫 (māo, cat (CL:隻|只[zhi1])), 状 (zhuàng, (bound form) form).

Native pronunciation
HSK 7-9Radical: 犭 dog13 strokesFrequency #2786犭 semantic骨 phonetic

Definitions

  1. sly

Etymology & Origin

猾

pictophoneticdog

Decomposition: ⿰犭骨 (layout: left-right)

Components:犭semantic骨phonetic

Stroke Order

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

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

Words & Compounds

Common Compounds

WordPinyinMeaning
狡猾jiǎo huácrafty
老奸巨猾lǎo jiān jù huácunning
油猾yóu huásly
奸猾jiān huátreacherous
4
Total compounds
0
As first character
100
As last character
0
As middle character

猾 appears in 4 compound words: 0 as the first character, 100 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 猾 in natural Chinese text, ranked by NPMI (Normalized Pointwise Mutual Information) — a statistical measure of association strength.

狡jiǎo
0.8907,624 co-occurrences
奸jiān
0.5851,212 co-occurrences
婪lán
0.45978 co-occurrences
豪háo
0.444768 co-occurrences
吏lì
0.428354 co-occurrences
诈zhà
0.41684 co-occurrences
巨jù
0.394498 co-occurrences
狸lí
0.39072 co-occurrences
鄙bǐ
0.38842 co-occurrences
刁diāo
0.38236 co-occurrences

Idioms & Chengyu (1)

老奸巨猾lǎojiānjùhuáHSK 7+

to be extremely cunning and crafty; to be a wily old fox; to be an old hand at trickery and deception

phrase

Example Sentences

AI-Generated

这个人很狡猾，说话总是半真半假。

Zhè gè rén hěn jiǎohuá, shuōhuà zǒngshì bàn zhēn bàn jiǎ.

This person is very cunning; his words are always half true and half false.

Tatoeba

人们说，狐狸比其他动物要狡猾。

Rénmen shuō, húli bǐ qítā dòngwù yào jiǎohuá.

People say that the fox is more cunning than other animals.

Character Family

犭 Radical Family — Characters sharing the dog radical

狈bèi猜cāi猖chāng独dú犯fàn狗gǒu狠hěn猴hóu狐hú狡jiǎo

Related Characters

狗gǒu猫māo状zhuàng猪zhū独dú犹yóu狂kuáng猜cāi献xiàn猴hóu

Homophones — Characters pronounced huá

滑huá花huā哗huā华huá化huà划huá画huà话huà豁huá

Frequently Asked Questions

What does 猾 (huá) mean in Chinese?
猾 (huá) primarily means "sly." It is classified as HSK Level 7-9, making it an expert-level character. It ranks #2786 in character frequency.
How many strokes does 猾 have?
猾 is written with 13 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 猾?
The radical associated with 猾 is 犭 (dog). This radical appears in many characters related to dog.
What are the components of 猾?
猾 is composed of: 犭 (semantic), 骨 (phonetic). Its IDS decomposition is ⿰犭骨 with a left-right layout. Understanding the components helps with both memorization and recognizing related characters.
What are common words containing 猾?
Common words with 猾 include: 狡猾 (jiǎo huá, "crafty"); 老奸巨猾 (lǎo jiān jù huá, "cunning"); 油猾 (yóu huá, "sly"); 奸猾 (jiān huá, "treacherous"). There are over 4 compound words containing this character.
What characters sound the same as 猾 (huá)?
Several characters share the pronunciation huá: 滑 (to slip), 花 (flower), 哗 ((onom.) bang), 华 (abbr. for China), and 5 more. Context and tones help distinguish between them in speech and writing.
Is 猾 the same in simplified and traditional Chinese?
Yes, 猾 is written the same way in both simplified and traditional Chinese.

Practice writing 猾 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.