How to Write 浑 (hún) — Meaning “muddy; turbid; whole; simple”

Imagine a whole army (军) marching through water (氵), stirring up mud and making the water turbid. This image connects the sound hún, the water radical, and the meaning "muddy" in one scene. You can also think: "An army (军) in the water (氵) makes things a muddy mess."

Write the water radical 氵 as three neat dots on the left, taking up about one-third of the space. On the right, the 军 part has a dot at the top, then a horizontal stroke, and a left-falling stroke before the bottom 车 shape. A common mistake is making the 氵 too wide or forgetting the top dot in 军.

浑 has 军 on the right, which looks like a roof over a cart, while 㳄 has 欠 (a person leaning forward) and 汧 has 千 (a thousand). These different right-side parts give each character a unique meaning and pronunciation: 浑 is hún (muddy), 㳄 is xián (saliva), and 汧 is qiān (a river name). So visually, the right side is the key difference.

浑 appears in common words like 浑身 (hún shēn, all over the body) and 浑水 (hún shuǐ, muddy water). It can also mean "simple" or "naive" in words like 浑厚 (hún hòu, honest and straightforward). A famous idiom is 浑水摸鱼 (hún shuǐ mō yú), which means "to fish in troubled waters" — to take advantage of a chaotic situation.

Common words containing 浑 include: 浑身 (hún shēn) — all over the body; from head to toe; 浑水 (hún shuǐ) — muddy water; 浑浊 (hún zhuó) — turbid; muddy; cloudy.