泵

bèng
noun #11,148

Measure Word

一台泵 tái

Meanings

  1. 1 pump

Characters

Examples

HSK 4
Shuǐbèng huài le, xūyào xiūlǐ.
The water pump is broken and needs to be repaired.
HSK 7-9
Tā yòng qìbèng gěi lúntāi dǎqì.
He used an air pump to inflate the tire.

Tips

memory
泵 is a loanword from English 'pump'. The character combines 石 (stone) on top and 水 (water) below -- a stone device pushing water.

Components

radical
水 shuǐ
water
Bottom 水 in its full form - the indexing radical and the substance being moved. The character is read top-to-bottom as 'stone on water' = a mechanical pump driving liquid. Unlike most water-radical characters that use the side-form 氵, 泵 keeps full 水 underneath because the character is built to picture water trapped below a weight, with the four-stroke wave-pattern flowing out the sides.
semantic
石 shí
stone; rock
Top 石 - pictograph of a chunk of stone fallen from a cliff (厂 cliff + 口 fragment). Here it sits on top to picture weight pressing down. 泵 is a modern compound ideograph for the English loanword 'pump': stone weight bearing on water = water forced out under pressure. A rare invented Chinese character for a Western mechanical concept.

Stroke Order

泵 bèng