部首radical (饣)部件component (rest of character)书写your drawing
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字源zìyuánEtymology & Structure
字源洞见 zìyuán dòngjiàn · Etymological Insight
饱 splits cleanly down the middle: 饱 = 饣 + 包. The left element 饣 is the compressed running-script form of 食 (shí, food), the radical that marks dozens of eating and cooking words. The right element 包 (bāo, to wrap, to bundle) carries the sound. This is a textbook pictophonetic build: 饣 tells you the word lives in the world of the table, and 包 tells you it rhymes with bāo, dipped down to bǎo.
The phonetic 包 also pulls its weight semantically here. 包 is a wrapper that bulges around its contents, the same shape as a steamed bun (包子, bāozi) swollen with filling. Set that bulge beside the food radical and the picture writes itself: a belly packed tight, wrapped around a finished meal. The Shuōwén Jiězì glosses the older form 飽 as 厭也, sated to the point of having had enough.
The traditional character is 飽, with the full 食 on the left. The simplified 饱 trims that radical to the three-stroke 饣 but keeps the 包 intact, so the sound and the logic survive untouched. The meaning travels in one straight line: a stomach filled with food becomes any vessel filled to capacity, and from there fullness of feeling, of color, of experience.
Japanese borrowed the character as 飽 (hō / aku), preserved in 飽きる (akiru, to grow tired of), where being too full of something curdles into weariness. The Mandarin 饱 keeps the warmer end of that range: satisfaction, not surfeit.
吃饱chī bǎoEating Your Fill
饱 most often lands as a resultative complement after a verb of eating: 吃饱 (chī bǎo) is the verb 吃 plus the result 饱, meaning eat-until-full. The same slot accepts 喝饱 (hē bǎo, drink one's fill) and the colloquial 饿 (è, hungry) as its opposite pole.
吃饱chī bǎoto eat one's fill
V 动补 dòngbǔ
吃 (chī, eat) + 饱 (full) as a resultative pair: to eat until satisfied. The negative is 没吃饱 (méi chī bǎo, did not eat enough), and a question often takes 吃饱了吗 (chī bǎo le ma).
你吃饱了吗？再来一碗吧。
Nǐ chī bǎo le ma? Zài lái yì wǎn ba.
Are you full? Have another bowl.
孩子没吃饱，还想吃饭。
Háizi méi chī bǎo, hái xiǎng chī fàn.
The child isn't full yet and still wants to eat.
温饱wēnbǎowarmth and food; subsistence
N 名词 míngcí
温 (wēn, warm) + 饱 (fed): warm enough and fed enough, the baseline of a decent life. 温饱 names the threshold of basic livelihood in economic and political language, as in 解决温饱问题 (jiějué wēnbǎo wèntí, to solve the subsistence problem).
This family has only just secured the basics of food and warmth.
辨析 biànxī · 温饱 vs. 小康温饱 is mere subsistence, having enough to eat and stay warm; 小康 (xiǎokāng) is the next rung up, a moderately comfortable life.
饱餐bǎocānto eat a hearty meal
V 动词 dòngcí
饱 (full) + 餐 (cān, meal): to eat heartily, to feast. Often appears as 饱餐一顿 (bǎocān yí dùn, to have a good filling meal), with a faint literary warmth.
爬了一天山，他们饱餐一顿才回去。
Pá le yì tiān shān, tāmen bǎocān yí dùn cái huíqù.
After a full day of hiking, they ate a hearty meal before heading back.
饱满bǎomǎnPlenitude Beyond the Plate
引申 yǐnshēn · Extended Sense
Once the stomach is full, the character lends its fullness to anything that swells to capacity: a plump grain of rice, a person brimming with energy, air saturated with moisture. 饱 stops being only about food and becomes the word for a vessel filled to its limit, with no slack left.
饱满bǎomǎnfull, plump; brimming
Adj 形容词 xíngróngcí
饱 (full) + 满 (mǎn, full to the brim): plump and rounded, or figuratively brimming with vigor. Describes grain, fruit, and spirits alike, as in 精神饱满 (jīngshén bǎomǎn, full of energy).
今年的麦粒非常饱满。
Jīnnián de màilì fēicháng bǎomǎn.
This year's wheat grains are remarkably plump.
他精神饱满地走上讲台。
Tā jīngshén bǎomǎn de zǒu shàng jiǎngtái.
He stepped up to the podium full of energy.
饱和bǎohésaturated, saturation
V/N 动名词
饱 (full) + 和 (hé, to mix, to combine): saturation. A technical term for a solution, market, or air that can absorb no more, as in 市场已经饱和 (shìchǎng yǐjīng bǎohé, the market is already saturated).
This salt solution has already reached saturation.
饱含bǎohánto be brimming with
V 动词 dòngcí
饱 (full) + 含 (hán, to hold inside): to be charged with, brimming with. Used for tears, feeling, or meaning, as in 饱含深情 (bǎohán shēnqíng, brimming with deep feeling).
饱经风霜bǎo jīng fēng shuāngto have weathered wind and frost: hardened by hardship饱 here means having had a full share of something. The image is a face lined by years of exposure; used of people who have lived through long adversity. Common in literary and journalistic prose.
饱食终日bǎo shí zhōng rìto eat one's fill all day: to idle in comfortFrom the Analects (论语), where Confucius reproaches those who eat their fill the whole day and apply their minds to nothing. A pointed criticism of idleness; carries a moral edge.
饱学之士bǎo xué zhī shìa scholar full of learning: an erudite person饱 extends from a full stomach to a full mind. 饱学 means saturated with learning; a respectful term for a deeply read scholar. Formal register.
饱以老拳bǎo yǐ lǎo quánto treat to a full helping of fists: to give a sound beatingA grim joke on the eating sense: instead of a meal, the recipient gets a generous serving of punches. From the Jìn Shū (晋书). Vivid and slightly humorous in tone.
记忆法 jìyìfǎ · Master Retention Image
Picture a steamed bun (包子, bāozi) pulled from the bamboo steamer, its skin stretched taut and glossy over a filling that bulges against the seams. That bulge is 包, the wrapper swollen with content. Now set it beside the food radical 饣 on the left, the little ladle-and-rice mark that means the table. Food sign plus a bursting wrapper: a belly packed so full it shines like a dumpling skin.
Hold that swollen-bun shape and the whole word family unfolds from it. 吃饱 is your own stomach stretched to that taut roundness. 饱满 (bǎomǎn) is a grain of wheat plumped to the same fullness. 饱和 (bǎohé) is a glass of water that can dissolve not one more crystal of salt, saturated to the seam. Every sense of 饱 is that same image: a wrapper filled to its limit, with no room left inside.
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