箔 (bó): foil (thin metal sheet)

Meanings

1 foil (thin metal sheet)
2 metal leaf (gold leaf, silver leaf)
3 plaited matting (of bamboo or rushes)
4 silkworm rearing tray (made of woven bamboo)

Characters

箔

bó

foil, leaf, woven matting

Examples

佛像贴满了金箔。

Fóxiàng tiē mǎn le jīnbó.

The Buddha statue is covered with gold leaf.

请用锡箔纸包好食物。

Qǐng yòng xībó zhǐ bāo hǎo shíwù.

Please wrap the food in tin foil.

蚕农把蚕放在箔上养。

Cán nóng bǎ cán fàngzài bó shàng yǎng.

The silkworm farmer raises the silkworms on bamboo trays.

Tips

usage

Modern usage is dominated by metal-foil compounds: 金箔 (jīnbó, 'gold leaf'), 锡箔 (xībó, 'tinfoil'), 铝箔 (lǚbó, 'aluminum foil' — the kitchen kind), 锡箔纸 (tinfoil paper). The original sense — woven bamboo matting used as silkworm-rearing trays — survives mostly in agricultural / classical contexts.

memory

The 竹 (bamboo) radical on top is your clue to the original meaning: a bamboo mat. From there, the meaning generalized to 'thin sheet', and modern Mandarin reattached it to thin metal sheets — gold leaf, silver leaf, foil.

Components

radical

⺮ zhú

bamboo (top radical form of 竹)

Top bamboo radical — compressed canopy form of 竹, two paired leaf clusters. As the indexing radical it carries the meaning: a 箔 is a woven bamboo mat, a silkworm tray, or a thin metal sheet flat as a splint. Same family: 篱 fence, 笼 cage, 筐 basket, 筛 sieve.

phonetic

泊 bó

to moor; lake (here phonetic)

Bottom 泊 supplies the full sound — bó read identically in the parent. Borrowed purely for pronunciation. Same phonetic-family appears in 舶 ocean ship, 帛 silk, 拍 to slap (clap), all with related bó/pò readings derived from the 白 (bái) phonetic core.