verb

Meanings

  1. 1 old form of 掬 (to scoop up with both hands)
  2. 2 a double handful (classical)

Examples

Tā cóng quán zhōng jū le yī pěng shuǐ hē.
He scooped a handful of water from the spring and drank it.

Tips

history
is not used independently in modern Chinese. It depicted rice held in cupped hands and is the older core of (to scoop with both hands), which simply adds the hand radical. It also fed the phonetic of .
register
Archaic; replaced by in all modern writing.

Components

semantic
bāo
to wrap; enclose
is the wrap component, here the cupped hands curving around and enclosing what is being scooped.
semantic
rice; grain
(rice) sits inside the wrapping arms, picturing the grain held in a double handful.

Stroke Order