很
very; quite; (also, often used before an adjective without intensifying its meaning, i.e. as a meaningless syntactic element)
Closest English meanings
very·quite
The Calligrapher — Xī Chāo 郗超
Eastern Jin statesman and calligrapher of cursive script, follower of the two Wangs.
Eastern Jin calligrapher (), master of cursive script — known for 郗愔之子. Eastern Jin dynasty
Cultural Story
很 began as 狠, cruel — the hard edge before it softened into the intensifier we cannot live without. 說文 gives it as stubborn and severe, a word that bit. Somewhere in the mouths of speakers it lost the fang and became merely much, the yes said louder.
Common words & phrases
- 很多 many · a lot
- 很好 very good
- 很少 very few
- 很大 very big
- 很慢 very slow
Read the story behind the character
很多 is the answer to every how-many, 很好 the end of every worry, 很慢 the complaint about the lift. The bite is gone; the word now only scales the plain. We say it a hundred times a day without once meaning to be cruel, which is the gentlest defeat a character ever suffered.
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