(zǒng bù) - headquarters, head office in Mandarin
zǒngbùTraditional: 總部
Translation
headquarters, head office
Word origin
A compound of 总 (zǒng, general, overall, chief) and 部 (bù, department, section), so the department over all the others.
- Origin
- compound
- Root
- 总 (zǒng, overall) + 部 (bù, department)
Stroke order
总
部
Examples
。
The company's head office is in Beijing.
。
He was transferred to work at head office.
。
Head office will send someone next month.
。
This decision was made by head office.
。
Our head office has only thirty people.
总部 (zǒng bù) is the headquarters of a company, an army or an organisation: the office the other offices report to. 公司总部, 亚洲总部, 总部大楼 for the headquarters building.
The 总 in it is the same 总 that makes 总经理 a general manager and 总统 a president. Once you see that prefix meaning chief or overall, a good third of Chinese job titles stop being vocabulary and start being arithmetic.
The trap is grammatical rather than lexical. English "headquarters" carries a stray s and wobbles between singular and plural verbs; Chinese has neither problem. What does catch learners is that 总部 is used as a place and as an actor in the same breath, so 总部决定了 means the people at head office decided, exactly as English uses "head office says no".
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总部: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Mandarin word "总部" (headquarters, head office): a worksheet with the answer key built in, an infographic, and a sentence listicle. Open any one to view, print or save.
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Start your free weekThis word is part of lesson 50.