How to Write 摘 (zhāi) — Meaning “to pick (fruit or flowers); to take off (glasses or hat)”

Imagine your hand (扌) reaching up to pluck a fruit from a high shelf, and the right side 啇 looks like a shelf with a fruit on top. You can also think of the pinyin "zhāi" as sounding like "jai" — picture saying "jai!" as you pull a flower off a plant.

Write the left radical 扌 first: horizontal, vertical hook, then lift. The right side 啇 starts with a dot, then horizontal, then a square 口, and finishes with 冂 and 古-like strokes (total 14 strokes). A common mistake is making the 口 too big or forgetting the dot at the top right.

摘 (zhāi) means to pick or take off, while 掾 (yuàn) is a rare character for a low-ranking official and has no hand-action meaning. 揄 (yú) means to pull or praise and uses the phonetic 俞, not 啇. Visually, 摘 has a 啇 component on the right, whereas 掾 has 彖 and 揄 has 俞.

摘 is very common for picking fruit (摘苹果) or flowers (摘花), and for taking off glasses or a hat (摘下眼镜). Culturally, the phrase 摘录 (to extract) is often used in academic or literary contexts when taking notes from a book.

Common words containing 摘 include: 摘花 (zhāi huā) — to pick flowers; 摘下 (zhāi xià) — to take off; to pick; 摘录 (zhāi lù) — to extract; to take excerpts.