About
The character "蓦", whose traditional form is "驀", is structurally composed of the components for "horse" (馬) over "eye" (目), a configuration that originally depicted the action of a person mounting a horse by stepping onto its back, a movement requiring a sudden, upward lift. This literal sense of ascending or climbing gradually evolved to emphasize the swift and abrupt nature of the action itself, leading to its primary modern function as an adverb meaning "suddenly" or "unexpectedly". The semantic shift moved from describing a specific physical motion to conveying a more abstract temporal quality of immediacy, entirely shedding its earlier concrete association with the act of mounting, so that it now almost exclusively modifies verbs to indicate something occurring in an instantaneous or unanticipated manner.
Etymology Hide
Example Sentences Hide
他蓦地站起来。
我蓦然想起这件事。
蓦然间，雨停了。
她蓦地开口说话。
在路口，他蓦地回头。
蓦然听到铃声，学生们跑回教室。
当大家都在犹豫时，他蓦地做出了决定。
在漫长的等待后，她蓦然意识到时间已晚。