倍 (bèi): times (multiplier)

Meanings

1 times (multiplier)
2 -fold
3 double

Characters

倍

bèi

times; -fold; double

Combines 亻 (person) with 咅 — originally meant something added alongside a person, hence 'double'.

Examples

他的工资是我的两倍。

Tā de gōngzī shì wǒ de liǎngbèi.

His salary is twice mine.

中国的人口是日本的十倍。

Zhōngguó de rénkǒu shì Rìběn de shíbèi.

China's population is ten times that of Japan.

今年的利润增长了三倍。

Jīnnián de lìrùn zēngzhǎng le sānbèi.

This year's profit has tripled.

Tips

grammar

A是B的X倍 means 'A is X times B.' Note: 增长了三倍 means 'increased by three times' (now 4x the original), which can be confusing.

Components

radical

亻 rén

person (radical form)

Left indexing person radical. Multiplication originally referenced people in pairs or groups: 'one person plus another' meant double, the seed of the modern multiplier sense. The person radical also helps situate the abstract counting meaning in a concrete human-scale image — counting bodies, then quantities.

phonetic

咅 pǒu

to spit out; to reject

Right component supplies the sound (pǒu → bèi, a labial shift seen across the same series in 培, 陪, 部). Purely phonetic — the modern 'multiply' sense rides on the 亻 radical. The shape decomposes into 立 over 口 (mouth ejecting sound) but stands as one phonetic unit here.