wú
negative
Original meaning:
dance
Pictograph of a person dancing, with ox tails or bird feathers hanging from his arms, to pray for rain. Original form of 舞 (dance). The current meaning is a phonetic loan.
Evolution

Oracle script
(~1250-1000 BC)
Bronze script
Late Shang dynasty (~1100 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Component uses
Iconic component in 1 character (1 verified)
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*ma | mju | wú | not have |
*ma | mju | wú | volitional prefix |
*mo | mju | wú | don’t |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 98.0618% of movies
165th most common character in movies
105th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 12 |
Simplified | |
Unicode | U+7121 |
Shuowen | “,豐也。从林、。或說規模字。从大;,數之積也;林者,木之多也。與庶同意。《商書》曰:`庶草繁無’。” |
Sources
季旭昇《說文新證》p.495
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