郁 (yù): strongly fragrant

Meanings

1 strongly fragrant
2 lush and dense
3 melancholy
4 depressed

Characters

郁

yù

fragrant, dense, depressed

Examples

山间花香郁郁，令人陶醉。

Shānjiān huāxiāng yùyù, lìngrén táozuì.

The flowers in the mountains were intensely fragrant, intoxicating.

他情绪郁结，闷闷不乐。

Tā qíngxù yù jié, mènmènbùlè.

His emotions were bottled up, and he was in low spirits.

Tips

usage

郁 appears in two distinct contexts: describing rich fragrance (郁香) or dense foliage (郁郁葱葱), and describing emotional depression (郁结, 忧郁). Context makes the meaning clear.

Components

radical

阝 yì

city (right-side form of 邑)

Right-side city radical, the side form of 邑. The indexing radical when on the right (visually identical left-阝 stands for 阜 mound). 郁 was originally a small fiefdom whose name became the surname Yu; the city radical encodes that placename origin. After the simplification merge 郁 also took the senses of 鬱: lush, dense, gloomy (忧郁, 郁闷).

phonetic

有 yǒu

to have

Left side 有 — modern simplified shape absorbing older 有/林 elements from traditional 鬱 (the lush-forest character 郁 was merged with in 1956). Supplies the sound for the merged form: yǒu → yù with vowel shift. Standalone 有 means 'have, exist,' adding flavour of fullness / abundance — fitting 郁's dense, lush, brooding senses.