蜗 (wō): snail (bound form)

Meanings

1 snail (bound form)
2 (used in compounds relating to snails or slow movement)

Characters

蜗

wō

snail (bound form)

Examples

蜗牛在雨后的叶子上慢慢爬行。

Wōniú zài yǔ hòu de yèzi shàng mànman páxíng.

The snail slowly crawled on the leaves after the rain.

他蜗居在一间十平米的小屋里。

Tā wō jū zài yī jiān shí píng mǐ de xiǎowū lǐ.

He lived crammed into a tiny ten-square-meter room.

Tips

usage

蜗 almost always appears in compounds: 蜗牛 (snail), 蜗居 (to live in a tiny cramped space), 蜗行 (to move at a snail's pace). Rarely used alone.

Components

radical

虫 chóng

insect; small creature

Left insect radical — originally a pictograph of a coiled snake, later extended to cover all small crawling creatures including bugs, worms, and snails. It anchors 蜗 in the buggy-creature family alongside 蛇 snake, 蚂 ant, 蝴 butterfly. A snail counts as 虫 by virtue of being slow, soft, and shell-bearing.

phonetic

呙 guō

crooked-mouth (here phonetic)

Right side is 呙, simplified from 咼 ('crooked, twisted mouth'), supplying the sound — guō drifting to wō. Same phonetic powers 锅 pot, 涡 whirlpool, 窝 nest, 祸 disaster. The twisted, curling shape of 呙 also faintly mirrors the spiraling whorl of a snail's shell, a happy coincidence for the learner.