饫 (yù): (literary) to eat to satiety

Meanings

1 (literary) to eat to satiety
2 to be sated; to have one's fill
3 (literary) to bestow lavishly

Characters

饫

yù

to eat one's fill

Examples

HSK 5

饫闻其名，今日得见。

Yù wén qí míng, jīnrì dé jiàn.

I have long heard the name in abundance, and today at last meet the person.

HSK 7-9

宾客饫食而归。

Bīnkè yù shí ér guī.

The guests ate their fill and returned home.

Tips

register

Strictly literary - almost never appears in modern speech. The usual surviving compound is 饫闻 ('to hear over and over until tired of it'), a polite formula in formal letters and prefaces.

memory

Food radical 饣 (eat) plus 夭 - picture eating until you're slumped over: 'eaten to satiety'.

Components

radical

饣 shí

food (radical form of 食)

Side-food radical on the left - compressed three-stroke form of 食. Indexes 饫 in the eating family with 饭, 饱, 馆, 饿. 饫 means 'to eat one's fill, to be sated' - by extension overindulgence - so the food radical names the category, and 饫 adds the sense of having had too much.

phonetic

夭 yāo

to die young; lush

Right side 夭 supplies the sound - yāo shifted to yù through irregular Old-Chinese sound change. 夭's twin senses (premature death; lush growth) carry no live meaning in 饫. The character is now literary and rare, surviving mainly in classical phrases about feasting and indulgence.