啕

Loud, unrestrained wailing or screaming. Denotes vocalization at an extreme volume—guttural, piercing, or agonized.

Functions as a verb ("to wail"). Frequently paired with 嚎 (háo) in the compound 嚎啕 (háotáo), though it may appear alone in early texts while retaining the full sense of loud wailing.

Distinguish from other forms of weeping:

• 泣 (qì): Quiet weeping; tears without loud sound.
• 哭 (kū): Standard sobbing or crying.
• 啕 (táo): High-volume, open-mouthed lamentation.

Related to 嚎 (háo); while they share a semantic field, they should be treated as complementary rather than identical when encountered separately in early contexts.

Semantic variant: U+54B7.

If the author employs 啕 instead of 哭, they are specifically signaling the auditory intensity and physicality of the scene; avoid flattening this to a generic "cried." Because the glyph is semantically stable and does not typically drift into metaphorical meanings, if the context does not support loud vocalization, consider the possibility of a transcription error for a visually similar character before attempting a figurative reading.