彿
/
adverb #4,455

Meanings

  1. 1 (used in 仿佛) as if; seemingly; alike

Examples

HSK 6
Zhàn zài zhèlǐ, wǒ fǎngfú huídào le tóngnián.
Standing here I feel as if I have travelled back to my childhood.
HSK 6
Liǎng jiěmèi zhǎngde fǎngfú yī ge rén.
The two sisters look alike - you could be looking at the same person.
HSK 6
Tā fǎngfú xiǎngqǐ le shénme, tūrán tíng xiàlái.
He seemed to recall something and suddenly stopped.

Tips

register
The fú reading only survives in the literary-sounding adverb 仿佛 - "as if, seemingly, alike." It softens a statement: instead of asserting something is X, you say it looks/feels like X. Common partners: 仿佛回到从前 (as if back to before), 仿佛是真的 (almost as if it were real). The variant character 彿 is the traditional form and shows up in older texts; modern simplified writing uses 仿佛.
memory
Memory hook: when the character means a real Buddha figure or a Buddha-flavoured transliteration, read it as Fó (rising - like incense rising to the altar). When it's the see-through "as if" of 仿佛, read it as fú (a light puff, almost ghostly - like the image is half-there).

Components

radical
rén
person (radical form)
Left person radical - the side-form of . Marks as a humanoid figure: the Buddha is depicted as an enlightened being, hence the person radical. Same anchor in (you), (he), (plural), (image).
phonetic
not (classical); phonetic
Right supplies the sound exactly: fú (the older reading of as a transliteration of Sanskrit "Buddha-"). itself is a classical negation particle. Pure phonetic role - the meaning of "not" has nothing to do with Buddha. Same phonetic in (brush) and (boil).

Stroke Order