瘀 (yū): bruise; blood stasis

Meanings

1 bruise; blood stasis
2 stagnant (of blood); clotted

Characters

瘀

yū

bruise; stagnant blood

Examples

她的手臂上有一大块瘀。

Tā de shǒubì shàng yǒu yīdà kuài yū.

She has a large bruise on her arm.

中医认为很多疾病是因为血瘀。

Zhōngyī rènwéi hěnduō jíbìng shìyīnwèi xuè yū.

Traditional Chinese medicine believes many illnesses are caused by blood stasis.

Tips

usage

瘀 most commonly appears in compounds: 瘀血 (yūxuè, stagnant blood), 瘀青 (yūqīng, bruise), 瘀伤 (yūshāng, bruise injury). In TCM (中医), 血瘀 (blood stasis) is a key diagnostic concept.

mistakes

Don't confuse 瘀 (yū, bruise/stasis) with 淤 (yū, silt/blocked). They share the same pronunciation, and 淤 is sometimes used interchangeably for bruises in casual writing, but strictly 瘀 is the medical term.

Components

radical

疒 nè

sickness; ailment

Sickness radical wrapping the top-left, the indexing component. It marks 瘀 firmly in the medical family — alongside 病, 痛, 疼, 痊 — and primes the reader for a body-condition reading. In TCM 瘀 names blood stagnation, a core diagnostic concept.

phonetic

於 yú

at; in (literary preposition)

Right side 於 yú supplies the sound with a small tone shift yú → yū. 於 is the literary preposition 'at, in', and its phonetic family also gives 淤 silt/clog — closely related in meaning to 瘀 (clotted blood vs clogged water). Easy mnemonic: 瘀 is illness-clogged-up.