五十八 (wǔ shí bā) — fifty-eight

Definition

numeral
fifty-eight

Examples

  • 五十八。
    Wǒ yé ye jīn nián wǔ shí bā suì.
    My grandpa is fifty-eight years old this year.
  • 五十八。
    Jiào shì lǐ yí gòng yǒu wǔ shí bā gè xué shēng.
    There are fifty-eight students in the classroom.
  • 五十八。
    Zhè běn shū de jià gé shì wǔ shí bā kuài qián.
    The price of this book is fifty-eight yuan.

Origin

Characters in this word

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 →

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.

八 shows two bent lines, indicating the original meaning 'to divide'; it was later used for 'eight' because the words sounded alike.

Open 八 →

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