Kilo Lingo

(gù) - old, former; reason; therefore (bound) in Mandarin

Traditional: 故

Line drawing of 故
Coloured illustration of 故
#5200 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

old, former; reason; therefore (bound)

Word origin

A phono-semantic character: 攵 (the rap or strike radical) gives the sense of an action and 古 (gǔ, old) supplies both meaning and sound, yielding old, former and by extension a reason or cause.

Origin
phono-semantic
Root
攵 (strike radical) + 古 (gǔ, old, phonetic)

Stroke order

Stroke order for 故

Examples

He told a story.

This is a true story.

Tell me a story.

She deliberately did not tell me.

He deliberately pretended not to know me.

故 (gù) means old, former or reason; in everyday speech it lives chiefly in 故事 (gùshi), meaning story.

Appears in 1 word

Multi-character compounds in the corpus that contain 故.

Used in

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This word is part of lesson 104.