verb #20,389

Meanings

  1. 1 to hatch
  2. 2 to incubate (eggs)
  3. 3 to brood

Examples

HSK 6
Mǔjī xūyào sān zhōu shíjiān fū chū xiǎojī.
A hen needs three weeks to hatch her chicks.
HSK 6
Niǎo māma yìzhí zài cháo lǐ fū dàn.
The mother bird has been sitting on her eggs in the nest.
HSK 7-9
Nà méi kǒnglóng dàn bèi kēxuéjiā réngōng fūhuà.
That dinosaur egg was artificially incubated by scientists.

Tips

usage
is most commonly seen in the compound 孵化 (to incubate/hatch) and the phrase (to sit on eggs). As a standalone verb, refers specifically to the incubation of eggs by birds or artificially.

Components

semantic
luǎn
egg
Left - pictograph of fish or insect eggs laid in pairs, with two dots inside the curved walls picturing the embryos. Supplies the meaning: is the act of warming eggs until they hatch. Indexed under Kangxi #39 by tradition, taken from the child buried inside on the right.
phonetic
to brood; trust (here phonetic)
Right side supplies the sound - fú drifting to fū through a tone change. A perfect semantic match rides along: itself pictures a claw over a child , depicting a mother bird's foot on her nestlings. So stacks two brooding pictures - egg and mother-over-chick - into one verb for hatching.

Filed under radical (zǐ, #39) by convention. is not a separate component in , so no strokes are highlighted.

Stroke Order