飞 (fēi) · to fly

Meanings

1 to fly

Characters

飞

fēi

to fly

Simplified from 飛 - a bird rising into the air.

Examples

HSK 1

飞机飞了三个小时。

Fēijī fēi le sān ge xiǎoshí.

The airplane flew for three hours.

HSK 3

这种鸟能飞得很远。

Zhèzhǒng niǎo néng fēi de hěn yuǎn.

This kind of bird can fly very far.

HSK 5

鸟在天上飞。

Niǎo zài tiānshang fēi.

Birds fly in the sky.

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.