吃
to eat
HSK level
- Pinyin
- chī
- Part of speech
- verb
- Level
- HSK 1
- Strokes
- 6
- Register
- neutral
- In episodes
- 2
Stroke order for 吃
吃 is written with 6 strokes. The animation replays automatically.
What does 吃 mean?
吃 (chī) is the everyday Chinese verb 'to eat' — used for food and, idiomatically, for many things English speakers wouldn't think of as 'eating.'
The literal use is straightforward: 吃饭 (eat a meal), 吃苹果 (eat an apple), 吃药 (take medicine, literally 'eat medicine'). What surprises English speakers is how often 吃 appears in idioms: 吃苦 (eat bitterness = endure hardship), 吃醋 (eat vinegar = be jealous in love), 吃惊 (eat shock = be startled). 吃 is also the default verb for 'have a meal' — 你吃了吗？ ('have you eaten?'
) is a common casual greeting, especially among older speakers, similar to 'how are you?' in English. Drinks use 喝 (hē) instead of 吃, but soup is 喝汤 (drink soup), not 吃汤 — a common beginner mistake.
Memory hook: The 口 (mouth) on the left tells you it's about the mouth — and 吃 is what the mouth does most.
Hear 吃 in real episodes
吃 appears in 2 Fluentide podcast episodes at natural native speed. Each sentence plays at the easiest difficulty it exists in — switch it to hear the same moment at your level, with full pinyin and English throughout.
可是电池不能吃。
But you cannot eat a battery.
MIT Built a Battery You Can Swallow. It Powered a Device Inside a Pig for Three Days, Then Dissolved.
不吃，太不好了。
Not eating them would be far too bad.
A Hurricane Flattened Hawaii's Avocado Trees — So One Island Held a Guacamole Contest and Saved Its Own Radio Station
Example sentences
你吃了吗？
Nǐ chī le ma?
Have you eaten?
spoken
我想吃中国菜。
Wǒ xiǎng chī Zhōngguó cài.
I want to eat Chinese food.
neutral
这个苹果很好吃。
Zhège píngguǒ hěn hǎochī.
This apple is really tasty.
spoken
我们一起去吃饭吧。
Wǒmen yīqǐ qù chī fàn ba.
Let's go eat together.
spoken
Common phrases with 吃
Synonyms
Don't confuse 吃 with
喝 is 'to drink' — used for water, tea, coffee, and crucially soup (喝汤). Beginners often say 吃汤 (eat soup), which is wrong. Liquids drink, solids eat — and soup counts as liquid in Chinese.
吹 ('to blow') looks similar — same 口 radical on the left — but means to blow air. Easy to mix up by sight, never by meaning.
FAQ
Related words from the same episodes
Acquire it by listening
Meet 吃 again — in real Chinese, at your level.
You just saw 吃 in 2 episodes. Fluentide keeps feeding you news episodes at your level, so this word — and thousands like it — resurface in real sentences until they stick. Full pinyin and translation every time. Free to start.