无
usually supplies the sound wú/fǔ in a character · Kangxi radical 71
usually supplies the sound wú/fǔ in a character, and only sometimes the sense of lacking or having none
无 is the short form of 無, whose old graph showed a person standing with arms out holding tufts of feathers or streamers — a dancer, the same picture that survives in 舞 "dance". That drawing was borrowed to write the unrelated word "not have", and the dancing figure was eventually squeezed down to the four strokes of 无, where the top line is the shoulders and the bent leg at the bottom is all that remains of the body. How the abbreviated shape 无 itself arose is unclear. In 抚, 妩, 怃, 呒, 芜 it is doing phonetic duty, giving the wu/fu sound rather than any idea of absence.
无 at a glance
- Meaning
- usually supplies the sound wú/fǔ in a character
- Strokes
- 4
- Characters
- 6
- Role
- Contributes sound
- Kangxi radical
- 71
Characters with 无
HSK 6 · 1
Frequently asked questions
What does the component 无 mean?
无 means "usually supplies the sound wú/fǔ in a character". In the characters that contain it, it contributes sound.
How many Chinese characters contain 无?
6 characters in this dictionary contain 无, including ones at HSK 6.
Is 无 a radical?
Yes — 无 is Kangxi radical 71, one of the 214 traditional indexing radicals used to organise Chinese dictionaries.
How many strokes does 无 have?
无 is written in 4 strokes.