喂 (wéi): hello (only when answering the…

Meanings

1 hello (only when answering the phone)

Characters

喂

wéi

hello (only when answering the phone)

Examples

喂，你好，请问你找谁？

Wéi, nǐ hǎo, qǐngwèn nǐ zhǎo shéi?

Hello, who are you looking for?

喂！你听得到吗？

Wéi! Nǐ tīng dedào ma?

Hello! Can you hear me?

Tips

usage

Reserved for phone openers. The street-shout 喂 'hey' and the phone-answer 喂 'hello?' are the same character with a tone shift — wèi (4th) softens to wéi (2nd) specifically for picking up a call, then snaps back to wèi for the feeding verb and for hailing strangers.

culture

Chinese phone etiquette: answer with 喂, then 你好. Repeating 喂 over and over reads as impatient or rude — wait a beat after the first one.

Components

radical

口 kǒu

mouth

Left mouth radical — the indexing radical, anchoring 喂 as both a vocal call and the act of putting food in a mouth. 口 reliably marks attention-getting interjections shouted at someone: 嘿, 嗨, 哈, 啊.

phonetic

畏 wèi

fear; respect

Right side 畏 supplies the sound — an exact phonetic borrow with no tone shift in the feeding sense. The 'fear' meaning of 畏 contributes nothing to the calling-out or feeding sense; it is here purely for sound.