Chinese Character Wiki
物

wù

thing

Original meaning: 

varicolored cow

Phonosemantic compound. 牛 represents the meaning and 勿 represents the sound. Based on the original meaning "variety", depicting the variety of colors on a cow. Later the meaning shifted to "things".

Components
牛 meaning component

牛  Meaning component

niú

  

cow

勿 sound component

勿  Sound component

wù

  

must not

Evolution

物 Oracle script (~1250-1000 BC)

Oracle script

(~1250-1000 BC)
物 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

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

Clerical script

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

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

物  

wù

thing, substance, creature; thing; object; matter; abbr. for physics 物理

Most common words with 物
Freq.
Word
Meaning

礼物

gift

物

thing

动物

animal

人物

person

食物

food

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*C.mut

mjut

wù

thing


Statistics

HSK level 2

Appears in 89.7485% of movies

264th most common character in movies

142nd most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

8

Unicode

U+7269

Shuowen

“物，萬物也。牛為大物，天地之數，起於牽牛，故从牛，勿聲。”


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