Chinese Radicals Series卜bǔ

The word 卜 means ‘to the divine’. In the Shang dynasty, more than 3,000 years ago, the people consulted the gods about a lot of things by heating the shoulder-blades of oxen or tortoise shells over fore until cracks appeared. The pictogram of this word represents such a crack.

The word 卜 can be used in phrases meaning ‘to divine’, for example, 占卜 (zhānbǔ, ’to divine’)，卜卦 (bǔguà, ‘to divine using the Eight Trigrams’).

卜 can also be used as a component in word formation, mostly to indicate pronunciation, for example, 补 (bǔ, ‘to patch’), 赴 (fù, ’to attend’) and 讣 (fǔ, ‘obituary’). These words generally do not convey the original meaning of 卜.

Idioms and phrases
卜辞 bǔcí
The message supposedly revealed by the gods in divination
卜居 bǔjū
To divine whether a house is suitable for living in
卜算 bǔsuàn
To foretell by divining
生死未卜 shēngsǐwèibǔ
Not knowing whether someone is alive or dead.