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人物

Mandarin · pinyin rén wù

person; personage; figure (esp. sb of importance)
character (in a play, novel etc)
(genre of traditional Chinese painting) figure painting

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Characters in this entry

人: rén · man; people; mankind; someone else
物: wù · thing, substance, creature

Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

2–4 · ren2 wu4

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Read this spelling in Classical texts

Follow a written form into the eight pinned witnesses: Analects, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, Han Feizi, Sunzi and the Mao Shijing. A match is a place to investigate; it does not prove that a modern dictionary sense fits the passage.

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Compare dictionary sources Wiktionary · 6 senses · 2 Cantonese readings

Rime Cantonese 粵拼

jan4 mat2 · jan4 mat6

Cantonese word readings for 人物. This lexicon supplies readings, not definitions.

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Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section

Independent source senses for this spelling, with usage labels retained. Not matched to the pronunciation above.

noun

figure; personage
character (in a story)
personnel
(art) figure painting; painting of a person; portrait
(Classical) demeanour
(Classical) people and things

Source page · dump 2026-09-02 · Contributors & history

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