wind
wind
🇰🇷
Korean
pung
🇯🇵
On'yomi
fuu · fu
フウ · フ
Kun'yomi
kaze · kaza
かぜ · かざ
🇨🇳
Pinyin
fēng

It's made of..

Several parts combine into one character.

2 components
enclosing
small table
kamaec
insect

The stroke order..

9 strokes · 6.2s
This character..

風 has an unexpected etymology. In oracle bone script it was identical to 鳳 (the phoenix), built on the intuition that wind is what rises when a great bird beats its wings. Over time the two characters split — 鳳 kept the phoenix meaning, 風 took the wind meaning, and an interior 虫 (insect / small creature) settled inside the wind-character to mark "the moving thing inside the air". This is why 風 contains 虫 even though wind is not made of bugs.

Three script forms split here: 繁體 風 / 新字体 風 / 简体 风. The simplified form drops the inner 虫 entirely, leaving only the outer enclosure with two minimal strokes.

Mandarin: fēng, level 1st tone. 风 (fēng) covers physical wind and abstract style/atmosphere alike: 台风 (táifēng, typhoon — the Chinese coastal storm word that gave English "typhoon"), 风景 (fēngjǐng, scenery), 风格 (fēnggé, style), 风俗 (fēngsú, customs), 风险 (fēngxiǎn, risk — "wind danger"). The metaphorical leap from wind to "atmosphere/style" runs through every CJK language.

Japanese: on-reading フウ (fū) in 台風 (taifū, typhoon), 風景 (fūkei, scenery), 風呂 (furo, bath — note: irregular voicing, a Sino-Japanese loan that drifted), 和風 (wafū, Japanese-style). Less common on-reading フ (fu). The kun-reading かぜ (kaze) is the everyday word — and famously, 神風 (kamikaze) literally "divine wind", the typhoons that destroyed Mongol invasion fleets in 1274 and 1281 and later named the WWII pilots.

Memory aid: an outer "wind-frame" enclosing a small creature — the moving thing carried in the air.

Where you'll meet it..

🇰🇷Korean vocabulary
  • 颱風태풍 · taepungtyphoon
  • 風景풍경 · punggyeongscenery
  • 風船풍선 · pungseonballoon
🇯🇵Japanese vocabulary
  • 台風たいふう · taifuutyphoon
  • 風船ふうせん · fuusenballoon
🇨🇳Chinese vocabulary
  • 颱風táifēngtyphoon
  • 风景fēngjǐngscenery

Nearby characters..

cloudcloudrainrain
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