奥 (ào): profound

Meanings

1 profound
2 mysterious
3 abbr. for Olympics (奥运)

Characters

奥

ào

profound; mysterious

Examples

这个道理很奥妙。

Zhège dàolǐ hěn àomiào.

This principle is very profound.

奥运会四年一届。

Àoyùnhuì sì nián yī jiè.

The Olympics are held every four years.

Tips

usage

奥 on its own is rarely used in everyday speech. It most commonly appears as an abbreviation for 奥运 (Olympics) or in words like 奥秘 (mystery) and 奥妙 (subtle, profound).

Components

radical

大 dà

big; person with arms wide

Bottom big — the indexing radical here. Pictures a person standing with arms outstretched. Beneath the inner-recess imagery above, the figure of a person occupies the space, completing the image of someone deep in a sacred chamber. Drives the abstract sense of "deep, profound, mysterious."

semantic

宀 mián

roof; house (radical form)

Top roof — pictures the eaves of a covered building. The original 奥 depicted the south-west corner of an ancient hall, the deepest and most sacred recess where ancestral offerings were placed. The roof anchors this architectural meaning: a hidden interior space.

semantic

米 mǐ

rice; grain

Middle 米-shape — historically a hand-and-grain element representing the ritual offerings placed in the inner corner of the hall. In modern shape it has regularized to the rice graph. Together with the roof above, the image is "grain offerings under cover" — the inner sacred recess.