玄武

Mandarin · pinyin Xuán wǔ

Meanings

  1. Black Tortoise (the seven mansions of the north sky)
  2. (in Daoism) God of the north sky
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Characters in this entry

玄
xuán · deep, profound, abstruse; Kangxi radical 95
武
wǔ · military; martial, warlike
Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

2–3 · Xuan2 wu3

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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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Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section

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

name

  1. (astronomy) the Black Turtle, a Chinese constellation making up one of the Four Symbols of Chinese astronomy.
  2. (feng shui) the Black Turtle, a representation of water and direction north.
  3. Xuanwu, a Taoist god.
  4. (~區) Xuanwu (a district of Nanjing, Jiangsu, China)

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

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