How to Write 厝 (cuò) — Meaning “house; to place; to store (often in Minnan dialect)”

Imagine a shelter (厂) under which you keep piles of old (昔) belongings — that is your 厝 (house). You can also think of the top of 昔 looking like a stack of boxes, reinforcing the idea of storing items inside the house.

Start with the horizontal stroke of 厂, then its left-down stroke. Next write 昔: first the horizontal and vertical strokes at the top, then the two horizontal strokes in the middle, and finally the 日 component at the bottom. A common mistake is making the top of 昔 too wide or forgetting the middle horizontal stroke inside the 日 part.

厝 has the component 昔 (past), while 厓 (often used for "cliff") has 圭 (a pile of earth) underneath the 厂 radical, and 厕 (toilet) has 则 (rules/measure). Visually, 厝 looks more square with stacked horizontal lines inside, whereas 厓 is taller and 厕 has a different lower part. In meaning, 厝 is a house or to store (mainly in Minnan), 厓 means cliff, and 厕 means toilet in standard Chinese.

厝 is not part of standard Mandarin HSK vocabulary; it is primarily used in the Minnan dialect (spoken in Fujian, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia) to mean "house" or "home." Common words include 厝内 (inside the house) and 厝边 (neighbor). You may also see it in historical or funeral contexts like 停厝 (temporarily placing a coffin), but in daily modern Mandarin it is rare outside dialectal speech or place names.

Common words containing 厝 include: 厝内 (cuò nèi) — inside the house (Minnan dialect); 厝边 (cuò biān) — neighbor (Minnan dialect); 停厝 (tíng cuò) — to place a coffin in a temporary shelter.