部首radical (氵)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
湖 = 氵 + 胡. The three water-drops of 氵 on the left supply the meaning, and 胡 (hú) on the right supplies the sound. This is a textbook pictophonetic build: the radical tells you it is water, the phonetic tells you to say hú. The two halves still rhyme cleanly today, which is why the character has stayed easy to read across two thousand years of sound change.
The phonetic 胡 itself began as 月 (flesh) under 古 (old), originally the dewlap of dangling flesh under an ox's jaw. In 湖 none of that animal sense carries over; 胡 is borrowed purely for its pronunciation, the way a stamp is pressed for its shape rather than its picture.
The water radical points to the defining quality of a lake: it is still water held in a basin, distinct from the running thread of a river. Shuōwén glosses 湖 as a great pooled water, and the early sense is precisely that, a broad standing surface that gathers what the rivers bring down. Dongting and the lakes of the Yangzi plain are the model the word was built on.
The same graph crossed into Japanese as ko (湖, as in 琵琶湖 Lake Biwa) and Korean as ho, holding the lake sense intact in both.
水域shuǐyùBodies of Water
湖泊húpōlakes (collective)
N 名词 míngcí
湖 (lake) plus 泊 (pō, a still pool). The pairing is the standard geographic term for lakes taken as a class, the word a textbook or atlas uses.
Zhōngguó zuì dà de dànshuǐ húpō zài Chángjiāng zhōng-xiàyóu.
China's largest freshwater lakes lie along the middle and lower Yangzi.
辨析 biànxī · 湖泊 vs. 湖 湖泊 names lakes as a category in formal writing; a single named lake is just 湖, as in 西湖.
湖水húshuǐlake water
N 名词 míngcí
湖 (lake) plus 水 (water): the water of a lake itself, often invoked for its stillness and color.
湖水很清，能看见水底的石头。
Húshuǐ hěn qīng, néng kànjiàn shuǐdǐ de shítou.
The lake water is clear; you can see the stones at the bottom.
湖面húmiànsurface of a lake
N 名词 míngcí
湖 (lake) plus 面 (surface): the open face of the water, the plane that mirrors sky and mountain.
清晨的湖面平静得像一面镜子。
Qīngchén de húmiàn píngjìng de xiàng yí miàn jìngzi.
At dawn the lake surface is still as a mirror.
湖畔húpànlakeside, the shore
N 名词 míngcí
湖 (lake) plus 畔 (pàn, bank, edge): the land at the water's rim, a literary word for a lakeshore walk or dwelling.
他们沿着湖畔散步，一直走到天黑。
Tāmen yánzhe húpàn sànbù, yìzhí zǒu dào tiānhēi.
They strolled along the lakeside until nightfall.
地名dìmíngPlaces & the Wider World
用法 yòngfǎ · How the word travels
湖 anchors a cluster of proper names. Two great Yangzi provinces are named for their position against Dongting Lake (洞庭湖): 湖北 (Húběi, north of the lake) and 湖南 (Húnán, south of the lake). The character that means a single body of still water came to map an entire region of China.
From geography the word reaches into metaphor. 江湖 (jiānghú), literally rivers-and-lakes, names the floating world beyond the reach of court and family: the wandering swordsmen, healers, and outlaws of the martial-arts imagination, and by extension any unruly social arena.
西湖Xī HúWest Lake (Hangzhou)
N 名词 míngcí
西 (west) plus 湖 (lake): the storied lake at Hangzhou, ringed by causeways and pagodas, the most painted and most quoted lake in Chinese poetry.
西湖的春天到处都是游客。
Xī Hú de chūntiān dàochù dōu shì yóukè.
West Lake in spring is crowded with tourists everywhere.
江 (river) plus 湖 (lake): the open country of wanderers, far from court and home. In martial-arts fiction it is the lawless arena of swordsmen; in plain speech, the rough-and-tumble of the social world.
人在江湖，身不由己。
Rén zài jiānghú, shēn bù yóu jǐ.
Once you are out in the world, you are no longer your own master.
辨析 biànxī · 江湖 vs. 社会社会 (shèhuì) is society in the neutral sense; 江湖 carries the romance and danger of the outsider's world, swordsmen and con men alike.
湖南HúnánHunan province
N 名词 míngcí
湖 (lake) plus 南 (south): the province south of Dongting Lake, known for spicy cuisine and as Mao Zedong's birthplace.
湖南菜以辣闻名。
Húnán cài yǐ là wénmíng.
Hunan cuisine is famous for being spicy.
成语chéngyǔIdioms & Set Phrases
五湖四海wǔ hú sì hǎithe five lakes and four seas: from every corner of the landA sweep of the whole country. Used warmly for people gathered from everywhere: 我们来自五湖四海。
江湖骗子jiānghú piànzia wandering swindler, a roving con artistThe 江湖 of itinerant healers and fortune-tellers turned into a label for a charlatan who works the crowds.
浪迹江湖làng jì jiānghúto drift across rivers and lakes: to roam without a fixed homeThe romantic image of the wanderer with no settled address, common in martial-arts fiction and travel writing.
湖光山色hú guāng shān sèlake light and mountain hues: beautiful lake-and-mountain sceneryA set phrase praising scenic landscape, the stock compliment paid to West Lake and its kin.
记忆法 jìyìfǎ · Master Retention Image
Picture three drops of water (氵) running down the left, then pooling against the still bulk of 胡 on the right until they spread into a flat, glassy basin. The radical is the supply, the phonetic is the body the water fills, and the lake is what stands there at dawn, mirror-flat, holding the mountains upside down.
Hold that mirror surface and the compounds follow it outward. The 湖水 is the water in the basin; the 湖面 is the mirror itself; the 湖畔 is where you stand to look. Step further and the still lake becomes the 江湖, rivers-and-lakes, the wandering world a swordsman drifts across with no shore to call home.
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