mò
do not
Original meaning:
sunset
Depicts the sun (日) shining through vegetation (茻). Based on the original meaning "sunset", now written as 暮. The current meaning is a phonetic loan.
Evolution

Oracle script
(~1250-1000 BC)
Bronze script
Late Western Zhou (~800 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Wu (Three Kingdoms: 222-280 AD)Regular script
ModernMost common words with 莫
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
---|---|---|
do not | ||
Moscow, capital of Russia | ||
(idiom) baffling | ||
could it be | ||
nothing can surpass |
Component uses
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*mˤak | mak | mò | there is no X such that X … |
*mˤak | mak | mò | deliberate (v.) (loan) |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 23.3381% of movies
986th most common character in movies
955th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 10 |
Unicode | U+83AB |
Shuowen | “莫,日且冥也。从日在茻中。” |
Sources
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