外 (wài): outside

Meanings

1 outside
2 foreign
3 external

Characters

外

wài

outside; foreign; external

Examples

外面下雨了。

Wàimiàn xiàyǔ le.

It's raining outside.

他在外面等你。

Tā zài wàimiàn děng nǐ.

He's waiting for you outside.

Tips

history

外 is made of 夕 (evening) and 卜 (divination). Ancient fortune-telling was done outside at dusk.

Components

radical

夕 xī

evening; dusk

Left 夕 (evening) — the indexing radical. Pictures the moon partially showing — the dusk-time sliver. Compound ideograph reading: divining at dusk was unusual (normal divination was done at dawn), so 夕 + 卜 = 'divining outside the proper time' = 'outside, beyond.'

semantic

卜 bǔ

divination; to divine

Right 卜 (divination) — depicts cracks on an oracle bone after heat application. With 夕 it forms the compound: an oracle reading taken outside the proper hour. The shift from 'irregular reading' to 'outside, external' was already complete by oracle-bone times. Same 卜 anchors 占 (occupy), 朴 (simple).