莫 - Dong Chinese dictionary

mò

do not

Original meaning:

sunset

Depicts the sun (日) shining through vegetation (茻). Based on the original meaning "sunset", now written as 暮. The current meaning is a phonetic loan.

Components

茻 Iconic component

mǎng

vegetation, overgrown weeds

Due to historical stylistic changes, this component is less similar to 茻 than it was in ancient scripts.

日 Iconic component

rì

sun

Evolution

Oracle script

(~1250-1000 BC)

Bronze script

Late Western Zhou (~800 BC)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)

Clerical script

Wu (Three Kingdoms: 222-280 AD)

Regular script

Modern

Definitions

莫

mò

do not, is not, can not; negative; do not; there is none who

莫

Mò

surname Mo

Most common words with 莫

Freq.	Word	Meaning
	莫	do not
	莫斯科	Moscow, capital of Russia
	莫名其妙	(idiom) baffling
	莫非	could it be
	莫过于	nothing can surpass

Component uses

Sound component in 23 characters (4 verified)

模摸慕暮幕漠墓膜寞募摹蓦驀謨谟蟆饃馍镆貘嫫瘼糢

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese	Middle Chinese	Pinyin	Gloss
*mˤak	mak	mò	there is no X such that X …
*mˤak	mak	mò	deliberate (v.) (loan)

Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 23.3381% of movies

986th most common character in movies

955th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes	10
Unicode	U+83AB
Shuowen	“莫，日且冥也。从日在茻中。”

Sources

MTSU Chinese text computing

漢語多功能字庫

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Original meaning:

Freq.

Word

Meaning