The character 好 (hǎo): good

A Chinese garden courtyard at sunset: a pale wall pierced by a moon gate, a willow, pink peonies and a roof of dark tiles. At the left two flat silhouettes hold hands, a woman in a long coral red robe with her hair in a bun and a small amber yellow child looking up at her. At the right, the character 好 in dark brown: 女 squeezed on the left, its bar turned into a small rising stroke, and 子 on the right with its hooked stem and long crossbar.

Pronunciation: hǎo
Strokes: 6
Level: HSK 1
Radical: 女
Made of: 女子

What it means

good; appropriate; proper; all right!; (before a verb) easy to; (before a verb) good to; (before an adjective for exclamatory effect) so; (verb complement indicating completion); (of two people) close; on intimate terms; (after a personal pronoun) hello

Where its shape comes from

A woman and a child side by side, and the bone inscriptions already show them that way, the woman kneeling with the child close to her. Xu Shen glosses the character as "beautiful" and does no more than name the two elements. What they do together is open to debate: mother and child for some, the beauty of a woman for others, while a few specialists read 子 as a plain indication of sound. What is not open to debate is that the character is made of those two.

Source: Xu Shen, Shuowen Jiezi (121 CE); the Chinese University of Hong Kong character database.

A way to remember it

Two characters you have already met, shoulder to shoulder: 女 (nǚ), woman, on the left, 子 (zǐ), child, on the right. The 女 draws itself in to make room, and its long bar shrinks to a short stroke that rises and stops halfway across.

This is a memory aid, not the origin of the character.

Words it appears in

好吃 hǎo chī · HSK 2 tasty; delicious
爱好 ài hào · HSK 3 to like; to be fond of; to take pleasure in; to be keen on; interest; hobby; CL:個|个[ge4]
好像 hǎo xiàng · HSK 4 as if; to seem like
最好 zuì hǎo · HSK 4 best; had better ...; it would be best to ...
只好 zhǐ hǎo · HSK 4 to have no other option but to ...; to have to; to be forced to
正好 zhèng hǎo · HSK 4 just (in time); just right; just enough; to happen to; to chance to; by chance; it just so happens that

Writing it

See the stroke order of 好, animated stroke by stroke.