在店里补彩票和吃午饭饭团

What does 补 (bǔ) mean in Chinese?

补 (bǔ) is one of Chinese’s most useful single-character verbs: it means to fill what is missing, to patch what is broken, or to make up what was lost. The speaker in the clip restocks lottery tickets and pauses to explain it directly: 补的意思就是原来少了、缺了、空了，再加进去，让它变得完整 — “补 means something was short, lacking, or empty, and you add back in to make it whole again.” That definition covers nearly every use you’ll meet.

补 compounds into a wide family of everyday words: 补充 (bǔchōng, replenish/supplement), 补课 (bǔkè, make up a missed class), 补考 (bǔkǎo, sit a resit exam), 补觉 (bǔjiào, catch up on sleep), 补贴 (bǔtiē, subsidy). The underlying idea is always the same: something was depleted or deficient, and 补 puts it right. In the clip the speaker pulls fresh lottery tickets from a roll to replace sold-out slots — a perfectly concrete image for an abstract verb that learners can anchor to.