How to Write 萍 (píng) — Meaning “duckweed”

Imagine a flat (平) piece of green grass (艹) floating on the surface of water (氵). This visual of a small plant drifting calmly on a pond helps you remember that 萍 means duckweed.

First write the grass radical 艹 (two strokes across a vertical), then the water radical 氵 (three dots from top to bottom), and finally 平 (with a horizontal stroke first, then the two dots and the vertical). A common mistake is to write the water radical as three horizontal strokes instead of three dots, so be careful to keep them as dots.

Unlike 萍, 兹 has no water radical and means 'now' or 'this', while 苧 has the grass radical with a different bottom part (宁) and means a type of fiber plant. Visually, 萍 is the only one with the three-dot water radical on the left, so look for those water drops to identify it.

萍 appears in the common word 浮萍 (fú píng) meaning duckweed, and in the idiom 萍水相逢 (píng shuǐ xiāng féng), which describes strangers meeting by chance like drifting duckweed. It is often used in poetic or literary descriptions of floating, transient things.

Common words containing 萍 include: 浮萍 (fú píng) — duckweed; 萍水相逢 (píng shuǐ xiāng féng) — meet by chance like drifting duckweed; 青萍 (qīng píng) — duckweed.