殁

歿
mò
verb #84,412

Meanings

  1. 1 to die; to pass away (classical)

Examples

HSK 7-9
Guǎn Zhòng mò yǐ
The classical line "管仲殁矣" means "Guan Zhong has passed away".

Tips

history
殁 is a literary word for dying, rarely used alone in modern Chinese, which prefers 去世. It survives in formal phrases like 病殁 (to die of illness). It joins the death radical 歹 with 殳 for the sound, sharing a phonetic with 没.
register
Literary and formal - found in obituaries and classical text, not in everyday speech.

Components

radical
歹 dǎi
bad; death-related
Death radical 歹 on the left, originally a shattered bone. It marks 殁 as a death word, like 死 and 残.
phonetic
殳 shū
a pole weapon
殳 on the right supplies the sound frame for the mò reading. The same right-hand element pairs with a water radical in 没, a close cousin in sound and the sense of vanishing.

Stroke Order

殁 mò