四十五秒 (sì shí wǔ miǎo) — forty-five seconds

Definition

noun

forty-five seconds

Examples

四十五秒。
Bǐ sài hái yǒu sì shí wǔ miǎo jiù jié shù le.
The competition will end in forty-five seconds.
四十五秒，。
Qǐng shāo děng sì shí wǔ miǎo, wǒ mǎ shàng jiù lái.
Please wait forty-five seconds, I'll be right there.
四十五秒。
Tā yòng le sì shí wǔ miǎo pǎo wán le yì bǎi mǐ.
He finished a hundred meters in forty-five seconds.

Origin

Characters in this word

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

The form 四 was drawn as a nose breathing out. It later came to be used for the word four.

Open 四 →

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

The early shape 十 was mostly a single vertical stroke, sometimes with a dot, and later gained a horizontal stroke to form a cross. For the number ten, it marked the next digit above one.

Open 十 →

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

An older form had a crossed mark between a top bar and a bottom bar. The modern 五 keeps those bars, while the original idea is uncertain.

Open 五 →

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

禾少秒

Meaning part形符xíngfú

禾禾hécereal; grain

Sound part声符shēngfú

少

少shǎo秒miǎo

The sound has drifted apartThe sound part was a clue two thousand years ago — it often still helps, but not always.