啬 (sè): stingy

啬 (sè) is a Chinese character meaning “stingy.” Classified as HSK Level 7-9 (HSK 3.0 Standard, CLEC 2022), with radical 十 (ten). It ranks #3012 in character frequency (SUBTLEX-CH corpus).

Native pronunciation
HSK 7-9Radical: 十 ten11 strokesFrequency #3012

Definitions

  1. stingy

Stroke Order

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

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

Words & Compounds

Common Compounds

WordPinyinMeaning
吝啬lìn sèstingy
吝啬鬼lìn sè guǐmiser
2
Total compounds
0
As first character
50
As last character
50
As middle character

啬 appears in 2 compound words: 0 as the first character, 50 as the last, and 50 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 啬 in natural Chinese text, ranked by NPMI (Normalized Pointwise Mutual Information) — a statistical measure of association strength.

吝lìn
0.8311,191 co-occurrences
婪lán
0.48936 co-occurrences
俭jiǎn
0.47060 co-occurrences
鬼guǐ
0.435180 co-occurrences
毫háo
0.35978 co-occurrences
夫fū
0.349204 co-occurrences
却què
0.33836 co-occurrences
不bù
0.273240 co-occurrences
性xìng
0.262102 co-occurrences
张zhāng
0.26230 co-occurrences

Example Sentences

AI-Generated

啬字的写法很特别，让我印象深刻。

sè zì de xiě fǎ hěn tè bié , ràng wǒ yìn xiàng shēn kè .

The way the character "吝" is written is quite unique, and it really left an impression on me.

Character Family

十 Radical Family — Characters sharing the ten radical

半bàn单dān华huá卉huì卖mài南nán千qiān升shēng十shí午wǔ

Related Characters

午wǔ千qiān十shí半bàn南nán单dān卉huì卖mài华huá升shēng

Frequently Asked Questions

What does 啬 (sè) mean in Chinese?
啬 (sè) primarily means "stingy." It is classified as HSK Level 7-9, making it an expert-level character. It ranks #3012 in character frequency.
How many strokes does 啬 have?
啬 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 啬?
The radical associated with 啬 is 十 (ten). This radical appears in many characters related to ten.
What are common words containing 啬?
Common words with 啬 include: 吝啬 (lìn sè, "stingy"); 吝啬鬼 (lìn sè guǐ, "miser"). There are over 2 compound words containing this character.
Is 啬 the same in simplified and traditional Chinese?
Yes, 啬 is written the same way in both simplified and traditional Chinese.

Practice writing 啬 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.