雨 (yù): to rain; to fall as rain

Meanings

1 to rain; to fall as rain
2 (of snow, hail, arrows) to come down in a shower

Characters

Pictograph — the top horizontal is the sky, the canopy below the underside of clouds, the dots inside falling raindrops.

Examples

天雨雪。

Tiān yù xuě.

The sky rains snow. (Classical: it is snowing.)

密云不雨。

Mì yún bù yù.

Thick clouds yet no rain falls. (From the Book of Changes.)

Tips

register

Read 雨 (falling tone) only in classical and literary contexts where the character is used as a verb meaning 'to rain down'. In all modern everyday speech 雨 is the noun 'rain' (third tone); the verb 'to rain' is rendered by the compound 下雨. You will only encounter 雨 in classical texts and a handful of set phrases such as 天雨雪.

grammar

As a verb 雨 takes whatever is falling as its object — not just water. Classical texts use it for snow (雨雪), hail (雨雹), and even for arrows or stones raining down on a battlefield. The shift from third-tone noun to fourth-tone verb is the same kind of derivational tone change seen in 好/好 and 种/种.

Components

pictograph

雨 yù

rain

A textbook pictograph: the top horizontal is the sky, the canopy below the underside of clouds, the four dots inside falling raindrops. Attested almost identically in oracle-bone forms three thousand years ago. Functions as Kangxi radical #173 over the weather family — 雪 (snow), 雷 (thunder), 雾 (fog), 露 (dew).

Radical

Rain Kangxi #173

The weather radical. When 雨 sits on top of another character it almost always points to a sky-borne phenomenon — precipitation, atmospheric water, or sudden weather. Highly productive in meteorology vocabulary: 雪, 雷, 霜, 露, 雾, 霞, 霸. The four dots inside descend like falling drops.