覆 (fù) · to cover; to overturn

Meanings

1 to cover; to overturn
2 to reply (formal/literary)
3 to capsize; to overwhelm

Characters

覆

fù

to cover; to overturn; to reply

Examples

HSK 3

覆水难收。

Fùshuǐ-nánshōu.

Spilled water is hard to recover. (What's done cannot be undone.)

HSK 5

大雪覆盖了整个城市。

Dàxuě fùgài le zhěnggè chéngshì.

Heavy snow covered the entire city.

HSK 6

船在暴风雨中倾覆了。

Chuán zài bàofēngyǔ zhōng qīngfù le.

The ship capsized in the storm.

Tips

usage

覆 appears in many compounds: 覆盖 (to cover), 颠覆 (to subvert), 倾覆 (to capsize), 翻覆 (to overturn), 答覆/回覆 (to reply). The 'reply' meaning is more common in Taiwan and literary Chinese.

memory

Remember 覆水难收 (spilled water is hard to recover) - one of the most common proverbs using 覆. It's the Chinese equivalent of 'you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.'

Components

radical

覀 yà

cover; lid

覀 is the lid form of 西 - a flattened cap that sits across the top, depicting cloth or a vessel inverted as a cover. It is the indexing radical here and supplies the core idea of overturning or covering: 覆 = something flipped face-down on top of something else.

phonetic

復 fù

return; again

復 (fù) sits below as the phonetic, supplying the exact reading. It also adds a flavour of repetition or going-back-over, reinforcing 覆's senses of overturning, repeating, and reviewing (反覆, 颠覆, 覆盖). 復 is retained in 覆 because the simplification 复 was not adopted here.