祸 (huò) · disaster, misfortune, calamity

Meanings

1 disaster
2 misfortune
3 calamity

Characters

祸

huò

disaster; misfortune

Examples

HSK 2

祸从口出。

Huò cóng kǒu chū.

Disaster comes from the mouth. (Loose lips sink ships.)

HSK 5

这场祸事造成了很大的损失。

Zhè chǎng huòshì zàochéng le hěn dà de sǔnshī.

This calamity caused great losses.

HSK 7-9

他惹了大祸。

Tā rě le dàhuò.

He caused big trouble.

Tips

usage

祸 often appears in classical sayings and idioms: 祸从口出 (trouble comes from careless talk), 祸不单行 (misfortunes never come singly), 惹祸 (to cause trouble). Opposite of 福 (blessing).

culture

祸福相依 (misfortune and fortune depend on each other) reflects the Daoist idea that good and bad are intertwined, from the 老子: 祸兮福之所倚，福兮祸之所伏.

Components

radical

礻 shì

altar; spirit (radical form of 示)

Left indexing altar radical 礻 - left-side variant of 示, the spirit/ancestor radical. Pictures an altar where offerings were made to the gods. Anchors 祸 in the divine-affairs family alongside 神 (deity), 福 (blessing), 礼 (ritual), 祝 (pray). Disasters in classical thought came from the spirit world.

phonetic

呙 guō

crooked mouth (here phonetic)

Right 呙 supplies the sound (guō → huò through Old Chinese g/h alternation). Same phonetic family: 锅 (pot), 过 (cross), 涡 (eddy), 窝 (nest), 蜗 (snail). 呙 itself depicts a twisted mouth - a faint flavor of "things gone crooked," reinforcing the disaster meaning.