Chinese Character Wiki
无

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 form is a phonetic loan. The simplified character 无 was adapted from the cursive form of the traditional character 無.

Evolution

无 Bronze script Mid Spring and Autumn (~600 BC)

Bronze script

Mid Spring and Autumn (~600 BC)
无 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
无 Clerical script Western Jin dynasty (266-316 AD)

Clerical script

Western Jin dynasty (266-316 AD)
无 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

无 (無) 

wú

negative, no, not; lack, have no; not to have; no; none; not; to lack; un-; -less

Most common words with 无
Freq.
Word
Meaning

无

no

无法

unable

无论

no matter what or how

无聊

bored

毫无

not in the least

Component uses

Sound component in 6 characters (0 verified)

抚 芜 妩 庑 呒 怃

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*ma

mju

wú

not have


Statistics

HSK level 4

Appears in 98.0618% of movies

165th most common character in movies

105th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

4

Traditional

無

Unicode

U+65E0

Shuowen

“，亡也，从亡無聲；无，奇字无，通於元者，王育說：‘天屈西北為无。’”


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