厚薄

hòubó / hòubáo
noun #57,393

Meanings

  1. 1 favoritism; partiality
  2. 2 to favor one side and slight the other

Examples

HSK 5
Fēn dōngxi yào gōngpíng, bù néng fēn hòubó.
Divvy things up fairly - don't play favorites.
HSK 6
Tā duì liǎng ge túdì cónglái méiyǒu hòubó.
He has never treated one of his two apprentices better than the other.
HSK 7-9
Lǎoshī duì xuésheng yíshì-tóngrén, cóngbù fēn hòubó.
The teacher treats every student the same and never plays favorites.

Tips

usage
This reading carries the figurative sense: treating one side generously and the other shabbily. It is a short form of 厚此薄彼 and turns up mostly in the negative, as 不分厚薄 or 没有厚薄. Physical thickness is the other reading, hòubáo.
mistakes
Here 薄 takes its literary reading bó, the one in 刻薄 and 厚此薄彼, where it means slight or grudging. The everyday báo reading belongs to physical thinness, so a plate of steel is never measured in hòubó.

Stroke Order

厚 hòu
薄 báo