掠 (lüè): to take over by force, to rob, to plunder

掠 (lüè) is a Chinese character meaning “to take over by force.” Classified as HSK Level 7-9 (HSK 3.0 Standard, CLEC 2022), it is composed of 扌 (semantic) and 京 (phonetic). It ranks #1849 in character frequency (SUBTLEX-CH corpus).

Etymologically derived, 掠 hand. Its radical form 扌 (hand) appears in many related characters such as 手 (shǒu, hand), 打 (dǎ, hit, make), 找 (zhǎo, to look for).

Spoken pronunciation

Definitions

  1. to take over by force
  2. to rob
  3. to plunder

Etymology & Origin

掠

pictophonetichand

Decomposition: ⿰扌京 (layout: left-right)

Stroke Order

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

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

Words & Compounds

Common Compounds

WordPinyinMeaning
掠夺lüè duóto plunder
掠过verblüè guòto flit across
抢掠verbqiǎng lüèto loot
劫掠verbjié lüèto loot
掳掠verblǔ lüèto plunder
浮光掠影phrasefú guāng lüè yǐngflickering light and passing shadows (idiom)
掠美lüè měito claim credit due to others
掠夺者nounlüè duó zhěrobber
掠取verblüè qǔto plunder
前掠翼qián lüè yìswept-forward wing (on jet fighter)
飞掠verbfēi lüèto fly past
掠食lüè shíto prey on
掠卖lüè màito press-gang sb and sell into slavery
私掠verbsī lüèto privateer
擦掠cā lüèto brush against
17
Total compounds
41
As first character
47
As last character
12
As middle character

掠 appears in 17 compound words: 41 as the first character, 47 as the last, and 12 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 掠 in natural Chinese text, ranked by NPMI (Normalized Pointwise Mutual Information) — a statistical measure of association strength.

劫jié
0.6535,460 co-occurrences
夺duó
0.5534,233 co-occurrences
抢qiǎng
0.520980 co-occurrences
肆sì
0.506740 co-occurrences
食shí
0.4874,770 co-occurrences
焚fén
0.455512 co-occurrences
烧shāo
0.407374 co-occurrences
翼yì
0.396786 co-occurrences
抄chāo
0.395264 co-occurrences
侵qīn
0.376658 co-occurrences

Idioms & Chengyu (1)

浮光掠影fúguānglüèyǐngHSK 7+

cursory impression; superficial observation

phrase

Example Sentences

AI-Generated

掠照镜子,整理一下自己的仪容。

lüè zhào jìng zǐ , zhěng lǐ yī xià zì jǐ de yí róng .

Glance in the mirror and tidy up your appearance.

中国新闻网·文化Aug 2026

接受采访的多位原创者均表示,诉求从来不是禁止AI发展,而是拒绝AI无偿掠夺原创。

jiē shòu cǎi fǎng de duō wèi yuán chuàng zhě jūn biǎo shì , sù qiú cóng lái bù shì jīn zhǐ A I fā zhǎn , ér shì jù jué A I wú cháng lüè duó yuán chuàng .

Several creators interviewed stated that their demand has never been to ban the development of AI, but rather to reject AI’s uncompensated exploitation of original works.

少数派Aug 2026

我坐在车后排摇下车窗,看着车飞驰向前,掠过苏州河,跨过上海火车站的铁轨。

wǒ zuò zài chē hòu pái yáo xià chē chuāng , kàn zhe chē fēi chí xiàng qián , lüè guò sū zhōu hé , kuà guò shàng hǎi huǒ chē zhàn de tiě guǐ .

I sat in the back seat of the car, rolled down the window, and watched as the car sped forward, skimming past the Suzhou River and crossing the railroad tracks at Shanghai Railway Station.

IT之家Aug 2026

画面中, 一个圆形球体保持直线飞行,从一片疑似城市住宅区的上空掠过 。

huà miàn zhōng , yī gè yuán xíng qiú tǐ bǎo chí zhí xiàn fēi háng , cóng yī piàn yí sì chéng shì zhù zhái qū de shàng kōng lüè guò .

In the footage, a spherical object maintains a straight flight path as it flies over what appears to be an urban residential area.

中国新闻网·文化Aug 2026

如果可以随意抓取、“喂”给AI,相当于无偿掠夺创作者多年积累的智力成果。

rú guǒ kě yǐ suí yì zhuā qǔ , wéi gěi A I , xiāng dāng yú wú cháng lüè duó chuàng zuò zhě duō nián jī lěi de zhì lì chéng guǒ .

If content could be freely scraped and "fed" to AI, it would be tantamount to plundering—without compensation—the intellectual achievements that creators have accumulated over many years.

BastillepostMar 2026

纳许维尔掠夺者队3比1挫西雅图海怪队 费斯伯格一球...

nà xǔ wéi ěr lüè duó zhě duì 3 bǐ 1 cuò xī yǎ tú hǎi guài duì fèi sī bó gé yī qiú . . .

The Nashville Predators defeated the Seattle Kraken 3-1; Feisberg scored one goal...

Tatoeba

乌云正掠过这座城市。

Wūyún zhèng lüèguò zhè zuò chéngshì.

Black clouds were passing above the city.

Character Family

Semantic Family — Characters sharing the 扌 (hand) component

Homophones — Characters pronounced lüè

Frequently Asked Questions

What does 掠 (lüè) mean in Chinese?
掠 (lüè) primarily means "to take over by force." It is classified as HSK Level 7-9, making it an expert-level character. It ranks #1849 in character frequency.
What's the difference between 掠 and 就?
掠 (lüè) and 就 (jiù) are often confused. confusable. The key distinguishing feature: 扌 vs 尢 (same 京 component).
How many strokes does 掠 have?
掠 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 掠?
The radical associated with 掠 is 扌 (hand). This radical appears in many characters related to hand.
What are the components of 掠?
掠 is composed of: 扌 (semantic), 京 (phonetic). Its IDS decomposition is ⿰扌京 with a left-right layout. Understanding the components helps with both memorization and recognizing related characters.
What are common words containing 掠?
Common words with 掠 include: 掠夺 (lüè duó, "to plunder"); 掠过 (lüè guò, "to flit across"); 抢掠 (qiǎng lüè, "to loot"); 劫掠 (jié lüè, "to loot"); 掳掠 (lǔ lüè, "to plunder"). There are over 17 compound words containing this character.
What characters sound the same as 掠 (lüè)?
Several characters share the pronunciation lüè: 略 (strategy, slightly). Context and tones help distinguish between them in speech and writing.
Is 掠 the same in simplified and traditional Chinese?
Yes, 掠 is written the same way in both simplified and traditional Chinese.

Practice writing 掠 with real-time feedback

Trace stroke sequences, hear spoken pronunciation, and build lasting retention with spaced repetition in the HanziFeed app.

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.