Origin

This character combines water (the left side, shown as a short vertical line with two dots, a common way to write "water" when it's squeezed into the left edge of a character) with a sound hint on the right. The right component sounds like "hyou" and signals roughly how to pronounce the whole character. Since the character sits in the "water" category and means to drift or float, the picture is of something moving on water without control — the water radical tells you it's about liquid movement, while the right side just helps you say the word.