福 fú (second Mandarin tone; 13 strokes)
A Chinese character meaning roughly "fortune" or "happiness". The character is a combination of that of "omen" (示) and a phonetic character (高).
During the Chinese New Year (新年) celebration, you'll see 福 written everywhere — in windows, above doors, on calendars, etc. It is the character melodrame refers to in Luck, the inverted Chinese character — see Glowing Fish's fu dao (福到/倒).
It appears in the following phrases:
- 祝福
- zhù fú: to bless
- 幸福
- xìng fú: happiness
- 口福
- kŏu fú: "lucky attainment of good food"¹
- 祈福
- qí fú: to pray for luck
- 福建
- fú jiàn: the Fujian Province
- 福利
- fú lì: welfare
Of course, there are many other characters pronounced this way — 福 is just the one Westerners are more likely to see, especially this January 22. Other definitions that are Romanized to "fu":
- fū
- 夫: man, husband; sage, distinguished person; artisan; also, an initial particle ("now", "therefore", "however", etc.), a demonstrative pronoun, an adversative particle, a preposition, a final particle, a particle indicating consequence/result, or a pronoun), and the "fu" of gōng fū (工夫): time; work; effort; skill, technique
- 孵: to incubate, to hatch (of birds, insects, and fish)
- 尃: to spread over
- 敷: to spread over, to apply
- 膚: skin, flesh; superficial; pork
- an inferior type of agate
- bran; refuse (n.)
- raft (n.)
- fú
- 符: to match; symbol, sign, mark, talisman
- 幅: a measurement for scrolls and paintings
- 儰: to crawl
- 蝠: bat (animal)
- 輻: spoke (of a wheel)
- 服: to steer; to obey, to serve; to take medicine; clothing
- 扶: to help; to support with the hand, to prop up
- 孚: to have confidence, to trust, to be sincere; to brood over eggs
- 浮: to float; to exceed
- 俘: to capture, to take captive
- 弗: not (adv.)
- 拂: brush (n.)
- 彿 is the "foo" of the foo dog
- 伏: to hide; to prostrate
- 袱: bundle (n.)
- the hibiscus flower
- a type of water beetle; money
- to sit cross-legged; a Buddhist; to bow
- storm (n.)
- to agree with
- the instep (of a foot); the calyx (of a flower)
- raft (n.); drumstick (of a drum)
- "The white pellicle lining the culms of a water-plant, from which the meaning of intimate, friendly, related, is derived."²
- suburbs; territory
- wild duck
- a river in 囘川
- fŭ
- 府: government office, official residence, prefecture (also, the officer governing it); a palace; a store-house
- 俯: to bow, to bend; to condescend
- 腐: rotten, spoiled (of food); corrupt; putrid
- 腑: bowels, entrails, internal organs
- 斧: axe, hatchet
- 撫: to stroke, to rub; to calm, to soothe; to cherish
- 甫: man, father
- 輔: to assist; the upper jawbone; suburbs; to help, to support, "Poles attached to a cart to keep it from upsetting."²
- to pat; to slap
- to begin; just now; great, large
- dried meat
- "Embroidered garments used to indicate rank...."²
- fù
- 婦: wife, lady
- 付: to hand over; to pay
- 附: to attach, to adhere to, to depend upon; near to
- 咐: to instruct; to order, to command
- 父: father, uncle, elderly close relative (i.e. of the same surname)
- 副: assistant, vice-president; to aid, to second
- 富: wealth; wealthy; to enrich
- 復: to return; to recover
- 覆: to overturn; to cover; to reply
- 腹: abdomen
- 複: garment; complex
- 赴: to go to; to attend
- 訃: obituary
- 傅: teacher, distinguished person; to teach
- 縛: to tie, to bind
- 賦: to levy, to tax; to diffuse, to spread; also a type of poem ("Irregular, metrical, rhyming composition"²)
- 負: to assume responsibility, to bear, to sustain, to carry on the back; to owe; ungrateful, defeated; negative, minus
- 褜: hill
- to worship ancestors
- aconite (wolf's-bane)
- an extra horse added to a team
- a type of fish similar to a perch; a large measure of grain
- pot, cauldron
- to contribute towards funeral expenses
- to fall prostrate
You may notice that some different characters have the same meanings; since all the meanings are pronounced similarly (or, in some cases, identically), some characters have adopted alternate meanings.
References:
1: 中文·com: http://www.zhongwen.com/
2: Mathews' Chinese-English dictionary, Revised American Edition (Harvard U. Press: 1960)
I'm slowly learning some (Mandarin) Chinese, but I am by no means fluent. Any corrections or additional information woud be appreciated. |
