攸

yōu
adverb #14,353

Meanings

  1. 1 distant; far
  2. 2 adverbial prefix

Examples

HSK 7-9
Zhè shì yī jiàn xìngmìng yōu guān de dàshì.
This is a matter of life and death.
HSK 7-9
Lìhài yōu guān, bùnéng diàoyǐqīngxīn.
The stakes are high. We must not take it lightly.

Tips

usage
攸 is a classical Chinese word that almost exclusively appears in the compound 攸关 (to be of vital concern) in modern usage: 性命攸关 (a matter of life and death), 利害攸关 (of vital interest), 存亡攸关 (a question of survival).

Components

radical
攵 pū
tap; strike (radical form)
Right rap radical: a hand holding a stick, here directing the washing. Anchors 攸 in the family of action verbs: 教 teach, 改 change, 政 govern. The combined scene gave 攸 its original 'flowing along' sense, which abstracted into the literary 'distant' and the adverbial-prefix use seen in classical texts.
semantic
亻 rén
person (radical form of 人)
Left person radical: the side-form of 人, a standing human figure. Pictures the subject of the action: someone being washed. Pair it with the central water-stroke and the right hand-with-stick and the scene becomes a person bathed by water under direction.
ideograph
丨 gǔn
vertical stroke
Middle single vertical: visually just a stroke, but historically the contracted residue of a water stream once written between the figure and the hand. The original scene was washing a person's back with water; modern 攸 keeps only this thin trace of the flow. Reading: 丨 as a stylized water-line indicator, not a true component.

Stroke Order

攸 yōu