釜 (fǔ): cauldron

Measure Word

一口釜 kǒu

Meanings

1 cauldron
2 kettle (ancient)
3 ancient cooking vessel
4 an ancient unit of dry measure

Characters

釜

fǔ

cauldron; ancient cooking vessel

Examples

煮豆燃豆萁，豆在釜中泣。

Zhǔ dòu rán dòu qí, dòu zài fǔ zhōng qì.

Boiling beans by burning beanstalks, the beans weep inside the cauldron.

釜底抽薪是一个常用的成语。

Fǔdǐchōuxīn shì yīgè chángyòng de chéngyǔ.

Fudichouxin (taking the firewood out from under the cauldron) is a common idiom.

Tips

history

釜 names a round-bottomed iron or bronze cooking pot of the Han dynasty, set over a 灶 (stove). It survives in 釜底抽薪 (fǔ dǐ chōu xīn, 'pull the firewood out from under the pot' — solve a problem at its root) and the famous 釜中泣 line from Cao Zhi's 七步诗 (Seven-Step Poem).

memory

釜 sits on the 金 (metal) radical, signalling its identity as a metal vessel — though early ones were bronze and pottery, later ones iron.

Components

radical

金 jīn

metal; gold

Bottom is the metal radical, contracted from 8 strokes to 6 to fit under 父 — a typical squeeze when 金 takes the lower position. It anchors 釜 in the metalwork family: the cauldron is a cast-iron or bronze cooking vessel. Idiom 釜底抽薪 'pull firewood from under the cauldron' = remove the root cause.

phonetic

父 fù

father

Top supplies the sound: fù → fǔ (tone shift only). 父 originally pictured a hand holding a stone axe — the patriarch-as-tool-user image. It is purely phonetic here, although the 'authoritative head of household' flavour fits the cauldron's status as the family-feeding centrepiece.