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五百万 (wǔ bǎi wàn) — five million

Definition

numeral
five million

Examples

  • 五百万。
    Zhè tào fáng zi zhí wǔ bǎi wàn kuài qián.
    This house is worth five million yuan.
  • 五百万。
    Zhè ge chéng shì yǒu wǔ bǎi wàn rén kǒu.
    This city has a population of five million.
  • 五百万。
    Tā zhōng le wǔ bǎi wàn dà jiǎng.
    He won a five-million grand prize.

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.

五wǔfive
百万million
百bǎihundred万wànten thousand
偏正Modifier + head

五 means five, while 百万 means million; together they name the number five million.

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 →

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yī
Sound part声符shēngfú
白
白bái百bǎi
Same sound today

百 combines 一, which carries the number meaning, with 白, which provides the sound.

Open 百 →

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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