About
The character 晡 is a phono-semantic compound, with the left-side semantic radical 日 (sun/day) indicating its connection to time, and the right-side phonetic component 甫 providing its pronunciation. It was coined to denote a specific time of day in the traditional system, namely the late afternoon period from approximately three to five o’clock. The sun radical naturally ties the concept to the sun’s position as it descends toward evening. This character is most often found in the compound 晡时 (būshí), which explicitly refers to this time period in classical texts.