technical
noun

Meaning of 虚字

虚字 means empty word; function word; word with grammatical but no concrete lexical meaning. Pronounced xū zì.

  • empty word; function word; word with grammatical but no concrete lexical meaning

Definitions & Examples

rén
méi
yǒu
shí
zài
de
jiào
zuò
 

The ancients called words without concrete meaning 'empty words'.

shí
xiāng
duì
 
zài
zhōng
zhǔ
yào
zuò
yòng
 

Empty words are contrasted with full words and primarily serve grammatical functions in sentences.

Zhī
zhě
zhè
xiē
zài
dài
Hàn
zhōng
hěn
cháng
jiàn
 

These function words like 'zhi', 'hu', 'zhe', and 'ye' were very common in Classical Chinese.

Measure Words

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