wèi

position

location; place; seat; classifier for people (honorific); classifier for binary bits (e.g. 十六位 16-bit or 2 bytes); (physics) potential

person (亻) + standing (立) = one's position or place

A person standing somewhere occupies a position — physical, social, or ranked. This concrete image extends naturally to honorific counting of people and abstract notions like electrical potential.

+
PersonSemantic
Standing uprightSemantic

Words with 位

八位元

bā wèi yuán

8-bit (computing)

卧位

wò wèi

berth

这位

zhè wèi

this (person)

进位法

jìn wèi fǎ

system of writing numbers to a base, such as decimal or binary (math)

逊位

xùn wèi

to abdicate

部位

bù wèi

part (esp. of the body, but also of a vegetable, e.g. the root, or a garment, e.g. the sleeve, etc)

金汇兑本位制

jīn huì duì běn wèi zhì

gold exchange standard (economics)

金本位

jīn běn wèi

gold standard (monetary system)

银本位

yín běn wèi

silver standard (monetary system)

银本位制

yín běn wèi zhì

silver standard (monetary system)

铺位

pù wèi

bunk; berth

错位

cuò wèi

to be wrongly positioned; to be dislocated; to be misplaced

More characters with 亻