涡 (wō): eddy

Meanings

1 eddy
2 whirlpool
3 vortex

Characters

涡

wō

eddy; whirlpool; vortex

Examples

河水在大石头旁边形成了一个涡。

Héshuǐ zài dà shítou pángbiān xíngchéng le yīgè wō.

The river water formed an eddy next to the large rock.

飞机飞过后会留下气流涡。

Fēijī fēi guò hòu huì liúxià qìliú wō.

Aircraft leave vortices behind in their wake.

Tips

usage

涡 mostly appears in compounds: 旋涡 (whirlpool; spiral), 涡轮 (turbine), 涡流 (eddy current). The water radical signals its aquatic origin.

register

Everyday reading is wō (eddy, whirlpool, vortex). The reading guō is reserved for one proper name: the 涡河, a river in Anhui province. As a common noun the character is always wō.

Components

radical

氵 shuǐ

water (left-side radical of 水)

Left water radical, three drops, the side form of 水. It indexes 涡 in the moving-water family (河 river, 流 to flow, 浪 wave) and carries the meaning: a whirlpool is fundamentally a water structure, an eddy spinning in a current.

phonetic

呙 guō

twisted mouth (here phonetic)

Right 呙, a crooked-mouth shape, supplies the sound guō, dropping its initial to give wō (the same shift behind the 锅 pot reading). The same phonetic frame appears in 锅 pot, 蜗 snail, 窝 nest, all sharing the round, spiral image that reinforces the vortex meaning.