晤

wù
verb #15,423

Meanings

  1. 1 to meet (socially); to have an interview

Examples

HSK 5
Liǎng wèi lǐngdǎorén jǔxíng le huìwù.
The two leaders held a meeting.
HSK 5
Tāmen yuēdìng xiàzhōu wùmiàn.
They agreed to meet next week.

Tips

register
晤 is literary and formal. It appears mostly in compounds like 会晤 (huìwù, formal meeting) and 晤面 (wùmiàn, to meet face-to-face). In everyday speech, use 见面 (jiànmiàn) instead.

Components

radical
日 rì
sun; day
Left sun radical (Kangxi #72) - pictograph of the sun, a square enclosure with a central dot or stroke. In 晤 the radical signals daylight, brightness - meetings traditionally took place in daylight, face-to-face under the sun. Same radical anchors time-and-light chars: 明 (bright), 晚 (evening), 时 (time), 春 (spring).
phonetic
吾 wú
I; my (classical)
Right 吾 supplies the sound (wú to wù, only tone shifts) and a fitting semantic flavour: 吾 is the classical first-person pronoun. A meeting between 'I' and 'thou' under daylight is exactly what 晤 names. Same phonetic in 悟 (awaken, mental meeting with truth), 梧 (paulownia), 语 (speech). 会晤 'meet' is the everyday compound.

Stroke Order

晤 wù