Translingual

Stroke order

Han character

去 (radical 28 厶+3, 5 strokes, cangjie input 土戈 (GI), four-corner 4073₁, composition ⿱土厶)

Derived characters

• 却

References

• KangXi: page 164, character 10
• Dai Kanwa Jiten: character 3070
• Dae Jaweon: page 372, character 7
• Hanyu Da Zidian: volume 1, page 384, character 8
• Unihan data for U+53BB

Chinese

Glyph origin

Historical forms of the character 去
Oracle bone script	Bronze inscriptions	Large seal script	Small seal script

Ideogrammic compound (會意) : 大 ‎(“man”) + 口 ‎(“mouth, object”). Top figure simplified to 土, unrelated to 士 (“scholar, gentleman”), while bottom simplified to 厶. There are various interpretations of the combination of “man” and “mouth, object”. One is that the ideograph represented a man with a hole marked in his crotch, and the inventors of writing had perhaps “anus” (i.e. getting rid of) in mind (Schuessler, 2007). Another is that it represented a man departing from a cave or city.

Alternatively, it may be the original character of 呿 (OC *kʰal, *kʰas, *kʰab, “to open one's mouth”), the meaning given by the combination of 大 (“big”) and 口 (“mouth”). The meaning “to depart” would be an extension of the meaning “to open one's mouth”, as the lips depart from each other when one's mouth is open.

Shuowen Jiezi interprets the character as a phono-semantic compound (形聲, OC *kʰaʔ, *kʰas) : semantic 大 ‎(“man”) + phonetic 𠙴.

In addition, 去 is also the original character of 盍 (OC *ɡaːb, “to cover”). The 大 is a cover on top of an object 口.

Etymology

There were two pronunciations in Middle Chinese. The rising tone pronunciation originally meant “to put away, to eliminate” (causative of “to go away”), and the falling tone “to go away, to leave, to depart” (anticausative). The merger of the two pronunciations already happened in Old Chinese and most extant dialects do not observe this distinction now.

This word is of Sino-Tibetan origin with the basic meaning of "to get rid of". Compare Tibetan སྐྱག་པ ‎(skyag pa, “to spend, to lay out; dung, excrement”), རྐྱག ‎(rkyag, “dirt, excrement”), Burmese ကျ ‎(kya., “to fall, to become low”), ချ ‎(hkya., “to put down, to bring down, to lower”).

Pronunciation

Definitions

去

1. to go to; to go away; to leave; to depart

   Antonyms: 來／来 (lái)

   你去哪兒？ / 你去哪儿？  ―  Nǐ qù nǎr?  ―  Where are you going?

2. (before or after a verb) to go in order to do something
   • 他到辦公室去請假。 [MSC, trad.]
     他到办公室去请假。 [MSC, simp.]

     Tā dào bàngōngshì qù qǐngjiǎ. [Pinyin]

     He went to the office to ask for leave.

   • 他去釣魚了，而沒去打網球。 [MSC, trad.]
     他去钓鱼了，而没去打网球。 [MSC, simp.]

     Tā qù diàoyú le, ér méi qù dǎ wǎngqiú. [Pinyin]

     He went fishing instead of playing tennis.

3. to remove; to get rid of
   • 去掉  ―  qùdiào  ―  to remove
   • 脫去 / 脱去  ―  tuōqù  ―  to throw off
   • 拆去  ―  chāiqù  ―  to remove, to take off
4. (between two verbs) to; in order to
5. Particle used after a verb of motion to indicates movement away from the speaker.
   • 下去  ―  xiàqù  ―  to go down [ant. 下來／下来 (xiàlái, “to come down”)]
   • 送去  ―  sòng qù  ―  to send away
6. to send; to dispatch
7. to play (a part, a character); to act
8. last; past
   • 去年  ―  qùnián  ―  last year
9. Short for 去聲／去声 (qùshēng).
10. (neologism) what the ****; what; damn; ****

    我去  ―  wǒqù  ―  what the ****

Compounds

Japanese

Kanji

(grade 3 “Kyōiku” kanji)

1. to leave, to go away

Readings

• Goon: こ (ko)
• Kan’on: きょ (kyo)
• Kun: さる (saru), いぬ (inu)

Compounds

See also

• 落ちる

Korean

Hanja

去 • ‎(geo) (hangeul 거, revised geo, McCune-Reischauer kŏ)

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Vietnamese

Han character

去 (khứ, khử)

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