yóu
noun

Meanings

  1. 1 bluebeard (Caryopteris, an ornamental shrub)
  2. 2 (archaic) a foul-smelling weed

Examples

Yóu
Bluebeard is a deciduous shrub with pale blue flowers, grown for ornament.
Xūn yóu
Fragrant grass and the foul weed cannot share one vessel, just as good and bad people cannot work together.

Tips

history
Anciently meant a stinking weed, paired with (a fragrant herb) in the proverb that good and bad people, like sweet and foul plants, cannot share one container. In modern botany it names the ornamental bluebeard shrub.

Components

radical
cǎo
grass; plant
is the grass radical in top form, marking this as a plant: a shrub in modern use, a weed in classical use.
phonetic
yóu
still; like
supplies the sound yóu, matching its own reading exactly, and serves only as the phonetic element with no meaning contribution.

Stroke Order

yóu