杌 (wù): a low backless stool (classical)

Meanings

1 a low backless stool (classical)
2 a tree with no branches; unsteady (classical)

Characters

杌

wù

low stool; branchless tree (classical)

Examples

她拉过来一个杌子，坐在炉边。

Tā lā guòlái yí gè wùzi, zuò zài lú biān.

She pulled over a small stool, 杌子, and sat down by the stove.

Tips

history

杌 is rarely used alone in modern Chinese; the everyday word for a stool is 凳子. It survives in the dialectal 杌子 (low stool) and the literary 杌陧 (unstable). It joins the wood radical 木 with 兀, which gives both sound and the idea of a bare, lopped-off thing.

register

Classical and dialectal — found in old texts and the bound words 杌子 and 杌陧.

Components

radical

木 mù

wood; tree

Wood radical 木 on the left — a 杌 is a wooden stool, and also a tree stripped of branches, so it sits in the wood family.

phonetic

兀 wù

bare; towering

兀 on the right supplies the sound directly (wù) and hints at the meaning: 兀 itself means bare and cut-off, fitting a backless stool and a branchless trunk.