Kilo Lingo

(gōng) - public; fair; official (bound morpheme in many compounds) in Mandarin

gōng

Traditional: 公

Line drawing of 公
Coloured illustration of 公
#5109 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

public; fair; official (bound morpheme in many compounds)

Word origin

An ideographic compound of 八 (a sign of dividing or sharing) over 厶 (private), depicting the setting aside of the private, hence public, fair and common.

Origin
ideographic compound
Root
八 (to divide) + 厶 (private)

Stroke order

Stroke order for 公

Examples

I work at a company.

He's not in the office.

This company is very big.

This matter must be handled openly.

He works in a public sector unit.

公 (gōng) means public, fair or official as a bound morpheme, appearing in 公司 (gōng sī) "company" and 办公室 (bàn gōng shì) "office".

Appears in 7 words

Multi-character compounds in the corpus that contain 公.

Used in

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This word is part of lesson 103.