无 (wú) · not to have, no, none

Meanings

1 not to have
2 no
3 none
4 not
5 to lack
6 un-
7 -less

Characters

无

wú

without; none; not have

Examples

HSK 4

这里无人知道答案。

Zhèlǐ wúrén zhīdào dá'àn.

Nobody here knows the answer.

HSK 7-9

他无话可说。

Tā wúhuàkěshuō.

He had nothing to say.

HSK 7-9

无论如何我都支持你。

Wúlùnrúhé wǒ dōu zhīchí nǐ.

I'll support you no matter what.

Tips

register

无 is the literary/formal equivalent of 没有. Newspapers, signs, contracts, and set phrases use 无; everyday speech uses 没有. Saying 我无钱 in a casual chat sounds wooden - use 我没钱 instead.

grammar

Lives as a bound un-/-less prefix in fixed compounds: 无线 (wireless), 无限 (limitless), 无法 (unable to), 无聊 (boring), 无关 (unrelated). Treat each compound as a unit rather than building new 无 + X coinages.

register

Rare second reading mó appears in exactly one fossilized Buddhist invocation: 南无 (Sanskrit namo, 'I take refuge in'), as in 南无阿弥陀佛. You will only hear it in temples or chanting recordings - no other word uses this reading, so it doesn't warrant a separate dictionary entry. Default to wú everywhere else.

Components

ideograph

无 wú

not have; without

Four-stroke silhouette preserving no productive components - a self-contained abstract shape that carries the negation meaning. Already attested in pre-Qin texts as a variant of 無, adopted as the official 1956 simplification. Historically traditional 無 pictured a dancer holding tassels, borrowed phonetically for negation. Indexed under Kangxi #71 无 (the radical it heads); the radical isn't visibly exposed as a sub-component because the whole glyph IS the radical.

Radical

Not Have Kangxi #71

The simplified form of 無, originally a pictograph of a dancer holding tassels - borrowed early to write the negation 'not have'. As an indexing radical it organizes characters using the variant form 旡 (a person looking back, choking) such as 既 (already) and 暨 (and / up to).

Forms

无 wú

Default 1 characters

旡 jì

Right 1 characters