Origin

This character combines water (the left component) with a component suggesting something young or flourishing (the right). The idea is that water nourishes soil and plants, making land fertile and productive—water literally "pours onto" the earth to help things grow. The character came to mean fertility because irrigation and watering were essential to agriculture in ancient China. Over time it also picked up the sense of pouring or soaking, since that's the action by which water brings life to the land.

AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Compound ideographic (combined meanings).