馥 (fù): fragrance

Meanings

1 fragrance
2 scent
3 aroma (literary)

Characters

馥

fù

fragrance

Examples

园中花香四馥。

Yuán zhōng huāxiāng sì fù.

The fragrance of flowers fills the garden.

她名叫馥莉，取自馥郁芬芳。

Tā míngjiào Fù lì, qǔ zì fù yù fēnfāng.

Her name is Fuli, taken from 馥郁 — 'rich fragrance'.

Tips

usage

Literary character — rarely standalone in modern Chinese. Lives mostly in the compound 馥郁 (fùyù, 'rich and fragrant') and as a poetic/personal-name character (e.g. Taiwanese singer 蔡依林's character in 《特务J》, or actress 邵馥). Note the 香 (fragrance) radical embedded on the right-bottom — semantic clue.

Components

radical

香 xiāng

fragrant; sweet-smelling

Left fragrance radical — 香 itself, originally 黍 millet over 甘 sweet, naming the rich smell of cooked grain. Kangxi #186. Indexes 馥 in the smell family with 馨 fragrance and a handful of rare olfactory characters. 馥 means a dense, layered, long-lasting aroma — exactly the perfumed sense the radical anchors.

phonetic

复 fù

to return; repeat

Right side 复 supplies the sound fù exactly. 复 means 'to repeat, to come back,' which adds a quiet semantic flavour: 馥 is the kind of fragrance that returns wave after wave — lingering, recurring on the breeze. Often paired as 馥郁 'thickly fragrant,' describing perfume or rich flowers.