bèng
noun #11,148

Measure Word

tái

Meanings

  1. 1 pump

Characters

Examples

Shuǐbèng huài le, xūyào xiūlǐ.
The water pump is broken and needs to be repaired.
Tā yòng qìbèng gěi lúntāi dǎqì.
He used an air pump to inflate the tire.

Tips

memory
is a loanword from English 'pump'. The character combines (stone) on top and (water) below -- a stone device pushing water.

Components

radical
shuǐ
water
Bottom in its full form - the indexing radical and the substance being moved. The character is read top-to-bottom as 'stone on water' = a mechanical pump driving liquid. Unlike most water-radical characters that use the side-form , keeps full underneath because the character is built to picture water trapped below a weight, with the four-stroke wave-pattern flowing out the sides.
semantic
shí
stone; rock
Top - pictograph of a chunk of stone fallen from a cliff ( cliff + fragment). Here it sits on top to picture weight pressing down. is a modern compound ideograph for the English loanword 'pump': stone weight bearing on water = water forced out under pressure. A rare invented Chinese character for a Western mechanical concept.

Stroke Order

bèng