甫 (fǔ): barely

Meanings

1 barely
2 just
3 just now (classical/literary)

Characters

甫

fǔ

just; barely; only just (literary)

Examples

HSK 7-9

他甫一开口，全场顿时安静下来。

Tā fǔ yī kāikǒu, quánchǎng dùnshí ānjìng xiàlai.

The moment he opened his mouth, the whole room immediately fell silent.

HSK 7-9

战事甫定，百姓开始重建家园。

Zhànshì fǔ dìng, bǎixìng kāishǐ chóngjiàn jiāyuán.

No sooner had the fighting ended than the people began to rebuild their homes.

Tips

register

甫 is a classical and literary adverb, rarely used in spoken modern Chinese. It is common in written news, formal essays, and literary texts, particularly in Taiwan and Hong Kong. It corresponds to 刚 or 刚刚 in everyday speech.

Components

radical

用 yòng

use; vessel

The 用-shaped lower body is the indexing Kangxi radical for 甫. Originally 甫 depicted a young plant sprouting in a field; the graph was reanalyzed so its body matched 用, placing it in the use-radical lookup family despite no original tool-or-vessel meaning.

ideograph

十 shí

ten; cross

Top crossing stroke functions as a compressed cap marker above the main body, a graphic residue with no productive sub-structure. Historically the sprout emerging at the top of the original seedling pictograph, now collapsed into this single horizontal cap.