弗

Translingual

Etymology

Pictogram (象形) – two arrows, tied together to be straightened.

Later borrowed phonetically to mean “no”.

Han character

弗 (radical 57 弓+2, 5 strokes, cangjie input 中中弓 (LLN), four-corner 5502₇)

1. not, negative

Derived characters

• 沸

References

• KangXi: page 356, character 16
• Dai Kanwa Jiten: character 9708
• Dae Jaweon: page 673, character 1
• Hanyu Da Zidian: volume 2, page 990, character 9
• Unihan data for U+5F17

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Cantonese

Hanzi

弗 (Yale fat1)

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Japanese

Kanji

弗 (uncommon “Hyōgai” kanji)

1. Fluorine (likely a simplification of 氟).
2. The dollar sign ($).

Readings

• On: ふつ (futsu), ほち (hochi), ぼつ (botsu)
• Kun: ず (zu), どる (doru)

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Korean

Hanja

弗 (hangeul 불, revised bul, McCune-Reischauer pul, Yale pul)

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Mandarin

Hanzi

弗 (pinyin fú (fu2), Wade-Giles fu²)

Usage notes

In modern Chinese, the characters 不 (bù) and 否 (fǒu) are far more commonly used to mean “no”.

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Vietnamese

Han character

弗 (phất)