Kilo Lingo

(méi) - not (past negation); to lack in Mandarin

méi

Traditional: 沒

Line drawing of 没
Coloured illustration of 没
HSK 1
#54 of 5,000 Core 1000

Translation

not (past negation); to lack

Word origin

没 (méi) 'not (past); to lack' began as a water character (氵, water) for 'to sink, submerge', later borrowed for the common negative 'have not'. The traditional form is 沒.

Origin
phono-semantic compound
Root
氵(water, meaning) + 殳-like phonetic

Stroke order

Stroke order for 没

没

Examples

。

I did not go.

。

He did not speak.

？

Have you eaten yet?

。

I didn't hear what you said.

。

She didn't come to work.

Appears in 11 words

Multi-character compounds in the corpus that contain 没.

没有méi yǒudo not have; have not; not (past negation)没事méi shìit's fine, no matter, nothing wrong没错méi cuònot bad, pretty good, correct有没有yǒu méi yǒudo you have...? is there...? (yes-no question pattern)没什么méi shén meit's nothing, never mind, no big deal没关系méi guān xìit doesn't matter, never mind, that's OK从没cóng méinever (have done)没法méi fǎno way to, unable to没用méi yònguseless, of no use没人méi rénno one, nobody没想到méi xiǎng dàodid not expect, unexpectedly

Used in

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Grammar articles

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This word is part of lesson 2.