唔 (wú): hmm

Meanings

1 hmm
2 uh
3 um (expression of hesitation or thinking)

Characters

唔

wú

hmm; expression of thought or hesitation

Examples

唔，让我想想。

Wú, ràngwǒ xiǎngxiang.

Hmm, let me think.

唔，这个问题不好回答。

Wú, zhège wèntí bùhǎo huídá.

Hmm, this question is hard to answer.

Tips

usage

唔 is a thinking sound in Mandarin, similar to English 'hmm' or 'uh.' In Cantonese, 唔 (m4) means 'not' and is one of the most common words, but this is a completely different usage.

Components

radical

口 kǒu

mouth

Mouth radical on the left signals that 唔 is a sound coming out of the mouth — a thinking noise, a hesitation, a placeholder hum. The same radical fronts most onomatopoeia and interjections in Chinese: 啊 ah, 嗯 mhm, 哎 hey, 哦 oh. Here it confirms 'this character is a noise, not a word.'

phonetic

吾 wú

I; me (literary)

Right side is 吾 'I, my' (a classical first-person pronoun), supplying the sound exactly: wú matches wú. The phonetic role is straightforward; the semantic flavor is incidental. In Cantonese, 唔 has been borrowed as the negative particle (m4, 'not'), but in Mandarin it stays a thinking-hum. Same phonetic in 悟 to realize and 梧 wutong tree.