verb #36,096

Meanings

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

Examples

HSK 4
Yù mǎ ér xíng.
He drove the horses and set off.
HSK 5
Tā shànyú yù rén.
He is skilled at managing people.

Tips

history
originally pictured a hand () on a horse (), driving a chariot. It's the literary/classical form of and survives mainly in compounds like 驾驭 (to drive/control) and 统驭 (to govern).

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, 驭手). 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