Kilo Lingo

(wèi) - hello (on phone), hey in Mandarin

wèi

Traditional: 為

Line drawing of 为
Coloured illustration of 为
HSK 2
#117 of 5,000 Core 1000

Translation

hello (on phone), hey

Word origin

The character 为 (here read wèi) originally depicted a hand leading an elephant, conveying doing, making, or acting on behalf of. The modern simplified form is heavily reduced from the older 爲.

Origin
pictograph
Root
simplified from 爲, originally a hand 爪 leading an elephant 象

Stroke order

Stroke order for 为

为

Examples

，！

Hello!

，李lǐ？

Hello, is this Li Ming?

，？

Hello, can you hear me?

。

He works hard for his family.

顿dùn。

She made a meal for me.

为 (wèi) means hello (on phone), hey. It is used as a interjection in everyday Mandarin speech.

Appears in 11 words

Multi-character compounds in the corpus that contain 为.

为什么wèishénmewhy为什么wèi shén mewhy, for what reason因为yīn wèibecause, since认为rèn wéito think, to believe, to consider为了wèi lefor the sake of, in order to以为yǐ wéito think (mistakenly), to assume成为chéng wéito become, to turn into是因为shì yīn wèiit is because, it is due to作为zuò wéias, in the capacity of; conduct, achievement为何wèi héwhy, for what reason行为xíng wéibehaviour, conduct, action

Used in

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This word is part of lesson 3.