五wǔ

五

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Simplified · Today

简体

Simplified Chinese

Modern simplified form (簡體). 五 (wǔ, "five") remains unchanged from its traditional counterpart, its ancient form thought to depict交叉, two things crossing or intersecting. Though no radical itself, it appears in characters like 吾 (I, my) and 伍 (five, company of five).

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Shuowen

Five. The oracle bone form displays a crossed shape of two intersecting lines, which ancient scholars variously interpreted as a knot in cordage or a tally mark of five; the modern script preserves this crossing with horizontal and vertical strokes meeting to represent the tally, the number five.

Pinyin

wǔ· HSK 1

五wǔ

Character evolution

Shuowen

Pinyin