毫无

háowú · HSK 7

completely lack

毫 = fine hair + 无 = without; not even a hair's worth = completely lacking

毫 means a fine hair or the tiniest amount, and 无 means without or none. Stacked together they say there is not even a hair's worth of something, hence completely lack.

无 — top 一 + 林-like middle + fire radical 灬 below
Originally a pictograph of a person dancing while holding ornaments or tassels, meaning 'to dance' — the ancestor of 舞. It was borrowed phonetically to write the negative 'not have / without,' and the dance meaning was reassigned to 舞 with an added foot element. The simplified form 无 comes from an ancient variant.

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