What does 都 mean in Chinese?

都 (dōu) means "all, both" in Chinese. The new HSK exam expects you to recognise it at HSK 1.

How do you write 都?

都 is written with 10 strokes, starting from the 阝 (mound) radical and following standard Chinese stroke order (top to bottom, left to right). See the interactive stroke-order tool for the full animation.

What is the radical of 都?

The radical of 都 is 阝 (mound, Kangxi radical #170). Other common HSK characters using the same radical include 除, 险, 院, 际.

How many strokes does 都 have?

The Chinese character 都 has 10 strokes.

What HSK level is 都?

On the new HSK exam syllabus, 都 is a character to recognise at HSK 1.

都 (dōu): Meaning, Stroke Order, Radical & Examples

都

dōu

all, both

HSK 1 character 10 strokes Radical: 阝 (mound)

Quick Answer

都 (dōu) means "all, both" with 10 strokes, radical 阝 (mound), HSK 1 on the new exam.

Full dictionary entry for 都 →Animated stroke-order for 都 →

Pronunciation

dōu

Meaning

Primary: all

Other meanings:

both

Etymology

Oracle-bone origin

都 is not found in oracle bone script and appears in bronze inscriptions as a phono-semantic compound. The right side is 阝(邑, 'city' or 'walled settlement') giving the meaning, and the left side 者 (zhě) supplies the pronunciation. The original reference was to a large city, specifically one containing an ancestral temple of a ruling lineage.

Form evolution

Bronze and seal forms show 者 on the left and a clearly drawn 邑 on the right. In clerical script 邑 collapsed into the right-side 阝, and 者 underwent the standard simplification where the top element lost its original depiction of a plant. Modern 楷书 preserves this two-part left-right structure.

How the meaning evolved

The original sense was 'capital city' or 'metropolis', preserved in 首都 (capital) and 都市 (metropolis). From 'city' it extended to 'all, every' when read dōu, a usage likely arising from the idea of a capital gathering everything together, though the phonetic shift and exact pathway are debated. The two readings split cleanly in modern Mandarin: dū for city senses, dōu for the adverb.

Cultural note

The dual pronunciation trips up beginners who meet 都 almost exclusively as dōu (all) in sentences like 我们都去, and are surprised to find it read dū in 成都 (Chéngdū) or 京都 (Kyoto). The city sense is actually the older one.