pronoun #13,271

Meanings

  1. 1 thou; you

Examples

Rǔ děng hérén?
Who are you people? (archaic)
Rǔ zhī míng wéi hé?
What is thy name? (archaic)

Tips

register
is classical/literary Chinese (文言文). It's the equivalent of English 'thou'. In modern Chinese, use instead. You'll encounter in historical texts, classical poetry, and period dramas.

Components

radical
shuǐ
water (radical form of 水)
Three-drops water radical on the left - the side-form of . Originally was the name of a specific river in present-day Henan, the 汝水, so the water radical is literal: this graph began as a place-name marking a riverbed. Only by phonetic borrowing did it become the classical second-person pronoun 'thou.' Same water family: , , , .
phonetic
woman
Right supplies the sound - nǚ drifting to rǔ through historical n/r alternation. pictures a kneeling woman with crossed arms, the iconic graph for 'woman.' For the meaning is purely phonetic - there is no semantic link to women. The classical pronoun 'thou' was simply borrowed from this river-name through sound.

Stroke Order