Definitions

used in transliteration, e.g. 呋喃[fū nán], furan or 呋喃西林[fū nán xī lín], furacilinum; old variant of 趺[fū]

Etymology phono-semantic

mouth

Semantic: Phonetic:

About

The character joins the mouth radical (conventionally used for transcribing foreign sounds or onomatopoeia) on the left with the phonetic on the right. A relatively modern creation, it was coined for scientific terminology, in contrast to ancient characters rooted in natural phenomena or abstract concepts. It phonetically renders the names of organic chemical compounds taken from Western languages, most notably serving as the first syllable in the Chinese translation for "furan", a heterocyclic organic compound, so its usage is limited to that narrow domain.