花 huā = 艹 (cǎo, grass) + 化 (huà, to transform). The top element 艹 is the grass radical, the flattened pair of plant shoots that marks words for vegetation. Below it sits 化 huà, "to transform, to change," which here does double duty: it carries the sound (huà → huā) and it hints at the meaning, the plant in its changed, opened-out state. A flower is exactly that, a plant transformed into its blooming form.

This phono-semantic build is relatively late. Early texts wrote the flower with 華 huá (the character now read "splendid, magnificent" and used for China itself, 中華). 花 emerged as the specialized graph for the literal blossom, leaving 華 to carry the figurative "splendor." From the bloom three senses fan out:

1. Flower, blossom. The literal meaning. 花朵 huāduǒ (a flower, a bloom), 鲜花 xiānhuā (fresh-cut flowers), 花园 huāyuán (garden), 开花 kāihuā (to bloom).
2. To spend. A surprising leap into the verb of expenditure, money or time poured out the way a plant pours itself into blossom: 花钱 huā qián (to spend money), 花时间 huā shíjiān (to spend time).
3. Patterned, fancy, blurred. A flower is many-colored and intricate, so 花 came to mean multicolored, ornamented, showy, and by extension visually confused: 花样 huāyàng (pattern, variety), 花白 huābái (grizzled, salt-and-pepper), 眼花 yǎnhuā (eyes blurred, dazzled).

The thread is the blossom's two faces: its beauty and its profusion. The beauty gives "flower" and "fancy, patterned"; the profusion, the lavish outpouring, gives "to spend." Whether you are admiring a bloom, opening your wallet, or rubbing dazzled eyes, you are standing inside the same image of the plant unfolding into color.

The verb 花 is one of the first surprises a learner meets: the same glyph that means "flower" also means "to spend." The bridge is the image of pouring out. A plant pours itself into blossom; a person pours out money or time the same way, and the resource is consumed in the act. So 花 became the everyday verb for expending what you have.

The pattern is simple and very common: 花 + amount + on what. 我花了一百块 "I spent a hundred kuai." 花 takes both money and time as its object: 花钱 huā qián (spend money), 花时间 huā shíjiān (spend time), even 花力气 huā lìqi (spend effort). Where English uses two verbs, "spend money" and "spend time," Chinese uses the one verb 花 for both. Its near-synonym for money alone is 花费 huāfèi, which works as both verb and noun (an expense).

A blossom is many-colored and intricate, and that visual richness gives 花 a third life as an adjective: multicolored, patterned, fancy, ornate. 花布 huābù is patterned cloth; 花裙子 huā qúnzi, a floral skirt. From "many-colored" it slides toward "showy" and even "tricky," the sense of dazzle used to deceive, which surfaces in 花样 huāyàng (a trick, a fancy variation) and the chengyu 花言巧语.

The same profusion of color, when it overwhelms the eye, becomes visual confusion. 眼花 yǎnhuā means your eyes are dazzled, swimming, unable to focus: 看得眼花 "looking until your eyes blur." 花白 huābái applies the mixed-color sense to hair, salt-and-pepper, grizzled. So the one adjective runs from the delight of a floral print to the dizziness of a dazzled eye, both rooted in the blossom's overflowing color.

Read the glyph top to bottom: 艹 grass over 化 transform. A plant changes, and what it changes into is the flower. Hold that single image of the bloom and the three senses fall out of it naturally.

The flower itself is the literal meaning (鲜花, 花园, 开花). Watch the plant pour itself out into blossom, and that outpouring becomes the verb of spending, money or time poured out the same way (花钱, 花时间). Look at the blossom's riot of color, and that richness becomes "patterned, fancy" (花样), then, when the colors overwhelm the eye, "dazzled, blurred" (眼花). One bloom, three lives: the garden, the wallet, and the swimming eye.