liú / liù
verb #51,867

Meanings

  1. 1 to distill
  2. 2 to separate a liquid into components by boiling

Examples

Yuányóu tōngguò zhēngliú fēnlí chéng ránliào.
Crude oil is separated into fuels by distillation.
实验室蒸馏水
Shíyànshì yòng zhēngliúshuǐ.
The lab uses distilled water.

Tips

mistakes
Two readings, two worlds. (second tone) is the chemistry word — distillation, as in 蒸馏. The kitchen reading (fourth tone) means to steam cold food hot again.

Components

radical
shí
food; eat
Left-side food radical, the running form of . It survives from the cooking sense (re-steaming food); the chemistry meaning 'distill' grew out of that same idea of heating to drive off vapor.
phonetic
liú
to remain; (here) sound
Right side gives the sound liú and is itself the phonetic in a family of liú characters such as and .

Stroke Order

liú