或

huò
conjunction HSK 3 #484

Meanings

  1. 1 or
  2. 2 perhaps

Examples

HSK 1
Yì tiān huò liǎng tiān.
One day or two days.
HSK 5
Míngtiān huòxǔ huì xiàyǔ.
Perhaps it will rain tomorrow.
HSK 6
Nǐ kěyǐ zuò gōngjiāo huò dìtiě.
You can take a bus or the subway.

Tips

usage
或 is more formal/written. In everyday speech, 或者 and 还是 are more common.

Components

radical
戈 gē
halberd; dagger-axe
Outer 戈 - the halberd radical, indexing radical for 或. Pictures a long-handled dagger-axe, the standard weapon of early Chinese warfare. Anchors 或 in the weapon family alongside 戏 (play), 战 (battle), 我 (the spear-bearing self). Originally 或 pictured a guard with halberd defending a walled territory - that fortified region was the original meaning.
semantic
口 kǒu
mouth; enclosure
Inner 口 - the walled territory being guarded by the halberd. Combined with 戈 the picture is unmistakable: a fortified zone with armed defender. This is the original 或 = 'a country, a region.' The land-meaning later got the 囗 enclosure added around it to become 國/国, freeing 或 to drift into 'either/or, perhaps' through phonetic borrowing.
ideograph
一 yī
one (boundary line)
Bottom horizontal - the boundary line of the territory, the ground or wall the halberd-guard stands on. Pure positional indicator (not the number 'one'); together with the inner 口 above it forms the picture of a defended ground. Closes the character visually and grounds the 'land-with-guard' image.

Stroke Order

或 huò