郁 (yù): strongly fragrant

Meanings

1 strongly fragrant
2 lush and dense
3 melancholy
4 depressed

Characters

郁

yù

fragrant, dense, depressed

Examples

HSK 7-9

山间花香郁郁，令人陶醉。

Shānjiān huāxiāng yùyù, lìngrén táozuì.

The flowers in the mountains were intensely fragrant, intoxicating.

HSK 7-9

他情绪郁结，闷闷不乐。

Tā qíngxù yù jié, mènmènbùlè.

His emotions were bottled up, and he was in low spirits.

Tips

usage

郁 appears in two distinct contexts: describing rich fragrance (郁香) or dense foliage (郁郁葱葱), and describing emotional depression (郁结, 忧郁). Context makes the meaning clear.

Components

radical

阝 yì

city (right-side form of 邑)

Right-side city radical, the side form of 邑. It is the indexing radical when on the right (a visually identical left 阝 stands for 阜, mound). 郁 was originally a small fiefdom whose name became a surname, and the city radical encodes that placename origin. After the simplification merge it also took the senses of 鬱: lush, dense, gloomy (忧郁, 郁闷).

phonetic

有 yǒu

to have

Left side 有, a modern simplified shape absorbing older elements from traditional 鬱 (the lush-forest character 郁 was merged with in 1956). Supplies the sound for the merged form: yǒu to yù with a vowel shift. Standalone 有 means 'have, exist,' adding a flavour of fullness and abundance that fits the dense, lush, brooding senses.