力 or 刀?




力 lì denotes strength, and it combines with other characters to express meanings related to strength, force, energy, movement, etc.

刀 dāo denotes knife, and it combines with other characters to express meanings related to people’s acts with knife.

Tips:

Characters formed with 力 and 刀 can be both phonetic left-semantic right and phonetic top-semantic bottom. What’s more, characters combined with 力 and 刀 can in turn form phrases with 力 and 刀 to express meanings related to 力 or 刀, such as 努力, 动力; 剪刀, 劈刀