měi
pronoun HSK 3 #348

Meanings

  1. 1 each; every

Examples

Wǒ měitiān dōu pǎobù.
I run every day.
Měigè rén dōu yǒu zìjǐ de xiǎngfǎ.
Everyone has their own ideas.
Tā měicì lái dōu dài lǐwù.
She brings a gift every time she comes.

Tips

grammar
is often paired with : ...... means 'every...all...'. For example: 每个学生 (Every student came).
mistakes
needs a measure word before the noun (except time words): 每个 (every person), (every book), but 每天 (every day) needs no measure word.

Components

radical
mother
Bottom 5 strokes — the indexing mother radical (Kangxi #80), depicting a kneeling woman with two dots for breasts. Carries 's original meaning of 'lush, abundant' (a fertile mother figure), from which it shifted to 'every / each' as a sense of comprehensive plurality. Same radical in , .
semantic
丿 piě
head-cloth; hairpin (graphic residue)
Top 2 strokes — graphic remnant of an ancient hairpin or kerchief crowning a kneeling woman. The hint marks this slot unknown because the original picture was a woman with a decorative hairpin (an Ext-A variant); modern pedagogy treats these strokes simply as the headpiece sitting above below. Sets the scene of a fully-adorned mother figure.

Stroke Order

měi