涡 (wō) · eddy, whirlpool, vortex

Meanings

1 eddy
2 whirlpool
3 vortex

Characters

涡

wō

eddy; whirlpool; vortex

Examples

HSK 5

河水在大石头旁边形成了一个涡。

Héshuǐ zài dà shítou pángbiān xíngchéng le yígè wō.

The river water formed an eddy next to the large rock.

HSK 7-9

飞机飞过后会留下气流涡。

Fēijī fēi guò hòu huì liúxià qìliú wō.

Aircraft leave vortices behind in their wake.

Tips

usage

涡 mostly appears in compounds: 旋涡 (whirlpool; spiral), 涡轮 (turbine), 涡流 (eddy current). The water radical signals its aquatic origin.

register

Everyday reading is wō (eddy, whirlpool, vortex). The reading guō is reserved for one proper name: the 涡河, a river in Anhui province. As a common noun the character is always wō.

Components

radical

氵 shuǐ

water (left-side radical of 水)

Left water radical, three drops, the side form of 水. It indexes 涡 in the moving-water family (河 river, 流 to flow, 浪 wave) and carries the meaning: a whirlpool is fundamentally a water structure, an eddy spinning in a current.

phonetic

呙 guō

twisted mouth (here phonetic)

Right 呙, a crooked-mouth shape, supplies the sound guō, dropping its initial to give wō (the same shift behind the 锅 pot reading). The same phonetic frame appears in 锅 pot, 蜗 snail, 窝 nest, all sharing the round, spiral image that reinforces the vortex meaning.