飞 (fēi): to fly

Meanings

1 to fly

Characters

飞

fēi

to fly

Simplified from 飛 — a bird rising into the air.

Examples

鸟在天上飞。

Niǎo zài tiānshang fēi.

Birds fly in the sky.

飞机飞了三个小时。

Fēijī fēi le sān ge xiǎoshí.

The airplane flew for three hours.

Tips

history

The traditional character 飛 is a pictograph of a bird in flight with wings spread. The simplified 飞 retains the upward-sweeping wing shape.

usage

飞机 (airplane) literally means 'flying machine'. 飞 appears in many vivid expressions: 飞快 (extremely fast), 飞速 (at flying speed).

Components

pictograph

飞 fēi

to fly

Simplified from traditional 飛, originally a pictograph of a bird in flight with wings spread and tail trailing. The three-stroke modern form keeps only one upward-sweeping wing curl with the central body-stroke — still visually evokes a bird's wing slicing the air, which is why 飞 persists as its own indexing radical.

Radical

Fly Kangxi #183

The flight radical — pictograph of outstretched wings rising. As a Kangxi index it groups very few characters in modern Chinese: 飜 (archaic flip / variant of 翻) and the canonical 飞 itself. The simplified 飞 captured only one wing of the original 飛, but the indexing role survived in dictionaries.