wèi, wéi
do
Pictograph of a hand (又) guiding an elephant (象) to do work (in ancient China elephants were tamed to do work). Based on the meaning "to work; to do".
Evolution

Oracle script
(~1250-1000 BC)
Bronze script
Mid Western Zhou (~900 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Component uses
Sound component in 1 character (0 verified)
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*ɢʷ(r)aj | hjwe | wéi | make, do, act as |
*ɢʷ(r)aj-s | hjweH | wèi | for, because |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 99.9680% of movies
27th most common character in movies
18th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 9 |
Simplified | |
Unicode | U+70BA |
Shuowen | “爲,母猴也,其爲禽好爪,爪,母猴象也;下腹為母猴形。王育曰:‘爪,象形也。’,古文爲,象兩母猴相對形。” |
Sources
季旭昇《說文新證》p.194
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