湖(hú) - lake in Mandarin

湖 (hú) is a lake, a plain single-syllable noun for a body of water enclosed by land. It carries the 氵(water) radical on the left, the same radical you see across a whole family of water-related characters such as 海 (hǎi), "sea", and 河 (hé), "river".

It rarely stands entirely alone in real speech: most lakes are named with 湖 as a suffix, as in 西湖 (Xī Hú), "West Lake" in Hangzhou, and general phrases favour a measure word, 一个湖 (yí gè hú) or, for a large, well-known lake, 一座湖 (yí zuò hú). 湖边 (húbiān), "lakeside", and 湖水 (húshuǐ), "lake water", are both built directly from it.

Take care with the reading: this 湖 (hú, second tone, "lake") is a completely different character from 弧 (hú), "arc, curve", which happens to share the same pinyin syllable and tone. Only the character on the page tells you which one is meant.