过 (guò): to cross; to go over; to pass t…

Meanings

1 to cross; to go over; to pass through
2 to pass (time); to spend
3 to celebrate (a holiday)
4 to live; to get along
5 excessively; too-; over-

Characters

过

guò

to cross; to pass; to spend (time)

Examples

时间过得很快。

Shíjiān guò de hěn kuài.

Time passes very quickly.

过马路要小心。

Guò mǎlù yào xiǎoxīn.

Be careful when crossing the street.

我们在北京过春节。

Wǒmen zài Běijīng guò Chūnjié.

We celebrate the Spring Festival in Beijing.

Tips

usage

Three big senses share the same character. Movement: 过马路 (cross the street). Time: 时间过得很快 (time passes). Celebration/living: 过年, 过生日, 过日子. The thread is going across or through something — a road, a year, a life.

memory

Picture the walk-radical 辶 wrapping the bottom-left as a winding road, with 寸 (the inch-measure hand) marking each step you take across it. Every sense of guò is some kind of crossing: a street, a holiday, an obstacle, a threshold of 'too much'.

Components

radical

辶 chuò

walk; movement (radical form)

Walk-radical wrapping bottom-left — the contracted form of 辵 'walk'. Marks 过 as a movement verb: passing, crossing, going through. The same radical anchors most movement verbs (这, 进, 远, 近, 还). The toneless aspect-particle use (guo, 'have done') extended from 'having gone past it'.

phonetic

寸 cùn

inch; hand-measure (here phonetic)

Top-right 寸 — the simplified replacement for the much more complex 咼 of traditional 過. Supplies the sound: cùn shifted to guò, a substantial drift typical of 1956 reform substitutions. Pure phonetic loan; the inch-measure meaning of 寸 contributes nothing semantically here.