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水 is one of the most transparent of the surviving pictographs. The oracle bone form, around 1200 BCE, shows a vertical line with water droplets curling on either side — a stylised river, viewed in plan, with eddies. The bronze and seal forms keep that structure recognisably; the modern 水 is just a tighter version of the same drawing.
Because the character is rooted in the image of a flowing river, its meanings extend along several axes at once. 水 can be: the substance (water in a cup), a river (the great waterways are 水 in classical names — 渭水 the Wei river, 汉水 the Han), a liquid in general (墨水 ink, 药水 liquid medicine), and one of the five elements (五行 wǔxíng) of classical cosmology. All of these are visible already in pre-Han texts.
The radical form 氵 (the "three-water" radical, 三点水 sān diǎn shuǐ) is what 水 becomes when it sits on the left of another character. It marks compounds whose meaning has anything to do with liquid: 河 (river), 海 (sea), 湖 (lake), 油 (oil), 酒 (wine), 汁 (juice), 泪 (tear). The 氵 radical heads the largest single semantic family in the Chinese character set — well over a thousand characters.
When 水 appears on the left of a compound character it contracts to 氵, three short brushstrokes that suggest droplets. The semantic load is consistent: 氵 marks something to do with water, liquid, or moisture. This is one of the most reliable radical→meaning relationships in the script.
河 hé (river), 海 hǎi (sea), 湖 hú (lake), 江 jiāng (large river), 池 chí (pond), 溪 xī (stream), 泉 quán (spring), 瀑 pù (waterfall, in 瀑布). The geography of liquid is built systematically out of 氵.
油 yóu (oil), 酒 jiǔ (alcohol), 汁 zhī (juice), 汤 tāng (soup), 漆 qī (lacquer), 泪 lèi (tear), 汗 hàn (sweat), 涕 tì (mucus, in 鼻涕). Both desirable liquids and bodily fluids share the radical.
洗 xǐ (to wash), 浴 yù (to bathe), 游 yóu (to swim), 泡 pào (to soak), 沉 chén (to sink), 浮 fú (to float), 流 liú (to flow), 滴 dī (to drip). The verbs of contact with liquid all carry 氵.
The Lǎozǐ returns to water repeatedly as the central image of the Dao at work in the world. Chapter 8 opens: 上善若水。水善利万物而不争 — "The highest good is like water. Water benefits the ten thousand things and does not contend." The argument is structural: water descends to the lowest places, the places people disdain, and there it accomplishes more than any contending force.
Chapter 78 develops the same image into a paradox: 天下莫柔弱于水，而攻坚强者莫之能胜 — "Nothing in the world is softer or weaker than water, yet for attacking the hard and strong nothing can surpass it." The Daoist case for yielding is built on water's actual physics: the soft thing wears down the hard thing, given time. The image is not metaphorical decoration. It is the empirical observation on which an ethics is built.
Where Confucian texts reach for mountains as their image of moral steadiness, Daoist texts reach for water. The two run as parallel registers through the language. 仁者乐山，智者乐水 — "The benevolent love mountains; the wise love water" (Confucius, Analects 6.23). The compliment to water in that line is not nothing.
水 (water) · 火 (fire) · 木 (wood) · 金 (metal) · 土 (earth). These are not elements in the Greek sense (basic substances) but phases — five modes through which qi cycles. Water is the phase of winter, the north, the colour black, the kidneys in the body, and the planet Mercury. It generates wood (rivers nourish forests) and is overcome by earth (banks contain it). The system structures classical medicine, divination, urban planning, and a great deal of literary symbolism.
Literally "water fruit" — fruit being the juicy member of the 果 (guǒ, "fruit/result") family, distinguished from dry-matured products like nuts.
Literally "water-level" — the surface of still water as the reference for horizontal. Extended to any standard of measurement: skill level, income level, water level itself.
"Wind and water" — the classical art of placing buildings, graves, and furniture in alignment with the qi of the landscape. The two elements that move freely give the discipline its name. See the 风水 entry for the full treatment.
As a verb: to launch (a boat), to enter the water (a swimmer). As a noun in compounds: 下水道 (xiàshuǐdào, sewer), 下水管 (drainpipe). One of many compounds where the spatial preposition + 水 forms a working noun.