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FrequencyVery common — generally in the top 300 characters in modern Chinese
条 (tiáo) originally meant a thin branch or twig, and from there became the everyday measure word for long, narrow things — roads, rivers, fish, trousers, snakes, noodles — as well as for items on a list such as news stories and rules. Learners meet it very early in 面条 (noodles) and 条件 (condition), and constantly as a classifier: 一条路, 一条鱼, 一条裤子.
Mandarintiáo · ㄊㄧㄠˊ
Cantonesetiu4 · tìuh
In 苗条 (miáotiao, slender) the second syllable is normally unstressed/neutral in Mandarin. In Cantonese the measure-word use sometimes takes a raised tone in colloquial speech (tiu4*2) when the noun is dropped, e.g. 嗰條.
measure wordclassifier for items in a list or set: rules, news reports, text messages, pieces of advice
nouna strip, a long thin piece (as in 面条 noodles, 油条 fried dough stick)
nounan item, article or clause (of a law, treaty or agreement)
nouna twig or small branch (the original, now literary, sense)
nounorder, arrangement, logical sequence (as in 条理)
How it is built
phono-semantic
Radical 木. tree, wood.
木meaning tree or wood, pointing to the original sense of a slender branch
夂sound in the simplified form this is a reduced writing of 攸, which supplied the sound in the full form 條; on its own 夂 carries no meaning here
攸sound the phonetic element of the traditional form 條 (亻 + 丨 + 攵), itself read yōu
Origin
The traditional form 條 is a straightforward phono-semantic compound: 木 'wood' gives the meaning and 攸 (yōu) gives the sound, and the earliest attested sense is a small branch or twig. From 'slender branch' the word broadened to 'anything long and thin', then to 'item, clause', and finally to its modern role as a measure word. The simplified 条 is not a modern invention: a handwritten variant writing 攸 as a simple 夂 over 木 is attested in manuscripts and calligraphy long before the 1950s, and that cursive-derived shape was adopted as the standard simplified form.
Remembering it
A tree (木) with something trimmed off the top: what you get is a long thin twig — and from one twig comes one 条 of anything long and narrow. In the traditional 條, think of a person (亻) beating (攵) branches off a tree (木).
条 and 根 overlap as classifiers for long objects. Roughly: 根 suits rigid sticks (一根棍子, 一根头发), while 条 suits things that are long and flexible or that trace a path (一条河, 一条蛇, 一条路). Many nouns allow both. 条 is also the standard classifier for countable 'items of information' — 一条新闻, 一条微信, 一条规定 — and for a few animals (狗, 鱼, 龙). In Cantonese 條 is used the same way (一條路, 一條魚), but note Cantonese usually says 麵 on its own rather than 麵條 for noodles.
Context
油条 (fried dough sticks), eaten with soy milk, is one of the most recognisable Chinese breakfasts; calling someone 老油条 means they are a slippery old hand who knows how to dodge work. 不平等条约 'unequal treaties' is a fixed phrase in Chinese history teaching for the 19th-century treaties imposed after the Opium Wars.
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