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未亡人

Mandarin · pinyin wèi wáng rén

widow (humble self-reference in former times)

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Characters in this entry

未: wèi · not yet; eighth earthly branch
亡: wáng · death, destroyed; lose, perish
人: rén · man; people; mankind; someone else

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

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Mandarin tones

4–2–2 · wei4 wang2 ren2

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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 · 1 sense · 1 Cantonese reading

Rime Cantonese 粵拼

mei6 mong4 jan4

Cantonese word readings for 未亡人. 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

(literary) widow (typically as self-reference)

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

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