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卢比 (lú bǐ) — rupee (currency unit of India, Pakistan, Indonesia, etc.)

Definition

noun
rupee (currency unit of India, Pakistan, Indonesia, etc.)

Examples

  • 卢比。
    Wǒ qù yìn dù lǚ xíng de shí hou huàn le yì xiē lú bǐ.
    I exchanged some rupees when I traveled to India.
  • 卢比。
    Zhè ge guó jiā de huò bì dān wèi shì lú bǐ.
    The currency unit of this country is the rupee.
  • 卢比。
    Tā gěi le wǒ yì bǎi fēn lú bǐ zuò wéi xiǎo fèi.
    He gave me 100 rupees as a tip.

Origin

Single-morpheme word
构词法gòucífǎ
音译yīnyìTransliteration

The characters spell the sound of a foreign word; their individual meanings play no part.

卢lú
比bǐ

The characters carry no meaning here; 卢比 spells the loanword rupee.

Sound-only characters

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

This origin belongs to the traditional form 盧; 卢 is its simplified writing.

Meaning part形符xíngfú
田田tiánpictogram of an oven
皿皿mǐnvessel
Sound part声符shēngfú
虍
虍hū盧lú
Close in sound todayThe sound part was a clue two thousand years ago — it often still helps, but not always.

The traditional form 盧 began as a picture of an oven, later written 田, with 皿 (a vessel) and 虍 (for sound) added; simplified 卢 is a shorthand.

Open 卢 →

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

  • 匕匕bǐ
  • 匕匕bǐ

比 is two 匕 placed side by side. Chu Wan-li treats both as sound parts, while an old reading takes the side-by-side arrangement as putting things next to each other.

Open 比 →
Appears in
Money & Currency

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