为 (wéi): to act as; to serve as

Meanings

1 to act as; to serve as
2 to become; to turn into
3 to be; to do

Characters

为

wéi

to be; to act as; to become

Examples

他成为了一名医生。

Tā chéngwéi le yī míng yīshēng.

He became a doctor.

我认为你是对的。

Wǒ rènwéi nǐ shì duì de.

I think you're right.

作为老师，他很负责。

Zuòwéi lǎoshī, tā hěn fùzé.

As a teacher, he is very responsible.

Tips

mistakes

为 (wéi, 2nd tone) means 'to act as / become / be'. The same character read 为 (wèi, 4th tone) means 'for / because of'. Rule of thumb: if 为 is a verb glued to the front or back of another word (成为, 认为, 以为, 作为), it's wéi. If it introduces a purpose or cause (为了, 因为, 为什么), it's wèi.

usage

Bound morpheme — rarely stands alone in modern speech. You'll almost always meet 为 inside a compound: 成为 (to become), 认为 (to think), 以为 (to assume, often wrongly), 作为 (as / in the capacity of), 行为 (behavior). It also marks the passive in classical and formal modern Chinese (为 X 所 V = 'to be V-ed by X').

culture

Central to Daoist philosophy via 无为 — literally 'non-doing', the practice of acting in accord with the natural flow rather than forcing outcomes. The 道德经 teaches 无为而无不为 — 'do nothing, yet leave nothing undone'.

Components

ideograph

为 wéi

to be; to act as; to do

Cursive-derived silhouette with no transparent inner structure. Simplified in the 1956 reform from traditional 為 (9 strokes), which originally pictured a hand leading an elephant to work — hence the verb senses 'to do, to act as, to make'. The modern 4-stroke shape is a stylised contraction of that older drawing; the elephant and hand are no longer visible. Indexed under Kangxi #3 丶 (the dot radical) by tradition; the radical isn't visibly meaningful in the modern form.

Filed under radical 丶 (diǎn, #3) by convention. 丶 is not a separate component in 为, so no strokes are highlighted.