How to Write 嚏 (tì) — Meaning “Sneeze”

Imagine someone sneezes and their "tì" (tee) sound comes out of their mouth — the 口 radical on the left. You can think of the right part as looking like two round eyes and a nose (the top of the character), with the bottom strokes like an open mouth releasing the sneeze.

This 17-stroke character is quite complex, so write slowly. The mouth radical 口 on the left should be small and squarish, while the right side has many horizontal strokes — keep them evenly spaced. A common mistake is making the right side too narrow or forgetting the final downward hook at the bottom right.

While 嘬 (chuài/zuō) means "to suck" or "to eat noisily" and 嘭 (pēng) is an onomatopoeia for a loud bang, 嚏 specifically means "sneeze." Visually, 嚏 has the mouth radical plus many strokes on the right, while 嘬 has three mouths stacked and 嘭 has a simpler right side with 彭 (péng) as its phonetic.

The character 嚏 appears almost exclusively in the word 打喷嚏 (dǎ pēn tì, to sneeze) and its variants like 喷嚏 (pēn tì) and 嚏喷 (tì pen). It is not used alone; you always pair it with other characters. In Chinese culture, sneezing is sometimes thought to mean someone is talking about you, but this is a folk belief, not a formal language rule.

Common words containing 嚏 include: 打喷嚏 (dǎ pēn tì) — to sneeze; 喷嚏 (pēn tì) — sneeze; 嚏喷 (tì pēn) — Sneeze (colloquial).