About
The character "什" is structurally composed of the person radical "亻" combined with the numeral "十", a formation that originally denoted a unit of ten people, often in a military or organizational context. From this concrete concept of a decuple, its meaning broadened over time to convey a sense of miscellany or variety, illustrated in compounds such as "什锦" referring to an assorted collection. Its semantic journey further shifted as it became embedded in the modern interrogative pronoun "什么", where it now functions primarily as a syllabic and semantic component within a fixed grammatical construct, moving away from its earlier tangible associations toward a more abstract lexical role.
Etymology Hide
Example Sentences Hide
这是什么书？
你在做什么？
他为什么不来？
我不知道说什么。
你想吃什么水果？
无论什么天气，我都去。
她问我什么时候去北京。
如果你不明白这是什么意思，可以问我。