verb #36,096

Meanings

  1. 1 to drive (a horse or carriage)
  2. 2 to manage, to control
  3. 3 to govern

Examples

Tā shànyú yù rén.
He is skilled at managing people.
Yù mǎ ér xíng.
He drove the horses and set off.

Tips

history
originally pictured a hand () on a horse () — driving a chariot. It's the literary/classical form of (yù) and survives mainly in compounds like 驾驭 (to drive/control) and (to govern). In 《尚书》 the king 'drives the people like a frayed rein on six horses'.

Components

radical
horse
is the horse radical and gives its literal image — a hand reaching for the horse to drive it. The verb extends to "control, command, manage" anything (驾驭, ). Simplified keeps its three-stroke compact form.
semantic
yòu
hand; again
is the old hand-with-two-fingers pictograph. Beside the horse it shows the driver's hand grasping the reins — a compound-ideograph (会意) structure, not phono-semantic. No sound contribution; the meaning comes from horse + hand.

Stroke Order