覆 (fù): to cover; to overturn

Meanings

1 to cover; to overturn
2 to reply (formal/literary)
3 to capsize; to overwhelm

Characters

覆

fù

to cover; to overturn; to reply

Examples

大雪覆盖了整个城市。

Dàxuě fùgài le zhěnggè chéngshì.

Heavy snow covered the entire city.

覆水难收。

Fùshuǐnánshōu.

Spilled water is hard to recover. (What's done cannot be undone.)

船在暴风雨中倾覆了。

Chuán zài bàofēngyǔ zhōng qīng fù le.

The ship capsized in the storm.

Tips

usage

覆 appears in many compounds: 覆盖 (to cover), 颠覆 (to subvert), 倾覆 (to capsize), 翻覆 (to overturn), 答覆/回覆 (to reply). The 'reply' meaning is more common in Taiwan and literary Chinese.

memory

Remember 覆水难收 (spilled water is hard to recover) — one of the most common proverbs using 覆. It's the Chinese equivalent of 'you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.'

Components

radical

覀 yà

cover; lid

覀 is the lid form of 西 — a flattened cap that sits across the top, depicting cloth or a vessel inverted as a cover. It is the indexing radical here and supplies the core idea of overturning or covering: 覆 = something flipped face-down on top of something else.

phonetic

復 fù

return; again

復 (fù) sits below as the phonetic, supplying the exact reading. It also adds a flavour of repetition or going-back-over, reinforcing 覆's senses of overturning, repeating, and reviewing (反覆, 颠覆, 覆盖). 復 is retained in 覆 because the simplification 复 was not adopted here.