How to Write 呜 (wū) — Meaning “hoot / hum / sob (onomatopoeia)”

Imagine someone crying and making a "woo" sound — 呜 is pronounced like "woo" and looks like a mouth (口) next to a crow (乌). Since crows also make a cawing sound, you can picture a crow's call blending with a person's sob: mouth + crow = 呜.

Write the left radical 口 in three strokes (vertical, horizontal, bottom horizontal), keeping it small and narrow. Then write 乌: start with a left-falling stroke, then a horizontal stroke, then a vertical hook, and finish with a horizontal stroke — the vertical hook is easy to forget. A common mistake is mixing 呜 with 鸣 (míng, a bird's call), which has a bird radical 鸟 instead of 乌.

呜 has the mouth radical on the left and 乌 on the right, meaning an onomatopoeic sound. 卟 (bǔ) has mouth plus 卜 (divination) and usually appears in the word 卟吩 (porphin), not common. 古 (gǔ) means 'ancient' and is simply 十 (ten) over 口 (mouth), with no 乌 — so if you see a right component that looks like 乌, it is 呜, otherwise it is 古.

呜 is most often used in the reduplicated form 呜呜 (wū wū) to describe the sound of crying, wind blowing, or a siren. You might also see it in 呜咽 (wū yè, 'to sob or whimper') in literature. It is a versatile onomatopoeia and appears frequently in comics, stories, and everyday speech to vividly convey sound.

Common words containing 呜 include: 呜呜 (wū wū) — sound of crying or wind (onomatopoeia); 呜咽 (wū yè) — to sob / to whimper; 呜 (wū) — hoot / hum / sob (onomatopoeia).