一万七千 (yí wàn qī qiān) — seventeen thousand

Definition

A specific large number: 'seventeen thousand' (17,000). Read as yī wàn qī qiān, not as separate digits.

numeral
seventeen thousand

Examples

  • 一万七千。
    Zhè ge bāo yào yí wàn qī qiān yuán.
    This bag costs seventeen thousand yuan.
  • 一万七千。
    Wǒ men xué xiào yǒu yí wàn qī qiān míng xué shēng.
    Our school has seventeen thousand students.
  • 一万七千。
    Tā měi gè yuè zhuàn yí wàn qī qiān duō kuài.
    He earns over seventeen thousand kuai each month.

Origin

Characters in this word

An abstract idea shown by a mark or a diagram rather than by a picture of an object.

一 is drawn as one horizontal stroke, marking the number one.

Open 一 →

A drawing of the thing itself, worn down over three thousand years into a few strokes.

This origin belongs to the traditional form 萬; 万 is its simplified writing.

For 万, the form 萬 was originally a picture of a scorpion, later borrowed for its sound to write 'ten thousand'; the scorpion picture is unrelated to that number.

Open 万 →

A drawing of the thing itself, worn down over three thousand years into a few strokes.

The shape of 七 comes from two crossing lines: the top line runs left to right, and the next line goes down and across.

Open 七 →

Most characters — around four in five — are built this way: one part hints at the meaning, the other at the pronunciation.

Meaning part形符xíngfú
一一yīone, signifying a number
Sound part声符shēngfú
人
人rén千qiān
The sound has drifted apartThe sound part was a clue two thousand years ago — it often still helps, but not always.

千 pairs 人, whose sound was similar, with 一, a number stroke; the extra line was explained as extension, and a thousand is a number reached by extending counting.

Open 千 →

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