和 (huò): to mix (ingredients); to blend

Meanings

1 to mix (ingredients); to blend
2 classifier for rinses of clothes
3 classifier for boilings of medicinal herbs

Characters

和

huò

to mix (ingredients); to blend

Examples

他在奶里和了点儿糖。

Tā zài nǎi lǐ huò le diǎnr táng.

He stirred a bit of sugar into the milk.

别老和稀泥，总得有个立场。

Bié lǎo huò xīní, zǒng děi yǒu gè lìchǎng.

Stop muddling everything together — you have to take a position eventually.

这件衣服已经洗了三和水。

Zhè jiàn yīfu yǐjīng xǐ le sān huò shuǐ.

This piece of clothing has already been through three rinses.

Tips

usage

huò covers two distinct patterns. (1) Verb: blending or stirring already-wet ingredients together, as in 搅和, 搀和, 和稀泥 (literally 'mix runny mud,' meaning to fudge a compromise). (2) Classifier: counting rinses of laundry or boilings of herbal medicine, both quite specialised. Distinguish from huó, which is dry-powder-plus-water kneading.

Components

radical

口 kǒu

mouth

Right mouth radical, the indexing radical. The original meaning of 和 was 'voices responding in harmony' (still alive in 和谐 'harmony'). The mouth-radical anchors the speech-and-agreement origin; 'and / with' is a grammatical extension from this 'joining together' sense.

phonetic

禾 hé

grain; standing rice plant

Left 禾 supplies the sound exactly: hé to hé, no shift. Originally a pictograph of a rice plant heavy with grain. Adds a faint semantic flavour, voices in harmony like a stalk of grain bowing, though it functions primarily as a phonetic. Same family yields 私, 秋.