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三万 (sān wàn) — thirty thousand

Definition

numeral
thirty thousand

Examples

  • 三万。
    Tā qù nián zhuàn le sān wàn kuài.
    He earned thirty thousand yuan last year.
  • 三万。
    Zhè ge xiǎo zhèn rén kǒu bù zú sān wàn.
    This small town has fewer than thirty thousand people.
  • 三万，。
    Wǒ cún le sān wàn kuài qián, zhǔn bèi mǎi liàng chē.
    I saved up thirty thousand yuan, planning to buy a car.

Origin

Compound word
构词法gòucífǎ
偏正piānzhèngModifier + head

The first part narrows down the second: it says what kind of thing the head is.

三sānthree
万wànten thousand

三 means 'three' and 万 means 'ten thousand', so together they give thirty thousand.

Characters in this word

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

三 is drawn as three parallel strokes, like 一 with one stroke and 二 with two.

Open 三 →

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 →
Appears in
Numbers & Counting

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