Word.ws English Dictionary

Wei

/weɪ/

Wei proper noun: a county of Handan, Hebei, China.

Proper noun (1)

Wei

  1. A county of Handan, Hebei, China.
  2. (historical) An ancient Chinese march during the Zhou dynasty
    • TO ASSAULT a strong and cohesive enemy head-on is to invite disaster. The stratagem of besieging the kingdom of Wei to save the kingdom of Zhao advocates indirect confrontation.1991, Gao Yuan, “Stratagem 2: Besiege the kingdom of Wei to save the kingdom of Zhao”, in Lure the Tiger out of the Mountains: The Thirty-six Stratagems of Ancient China, Simon & Schuster, →ISBN...
  3. (historical) Liang, the realm of the earlier march after its elevation to a kingdom
  4. (historical) A kingdom during the Three Kingdoms interregnum following China's Han dynasty.
    • After the Empire of Han was taken over by Wei (220) in the fifth year of the Ch’ing-lung period (237), the statue was moved from Ch’ang-an, the capital of Han, to Hsü-ch’ang, the capital of Wei, in modern Honan province.1979, Kuo-ch'ing Tu, edited by William Schultz, Li Ho, Twayne Publishers, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 59
    • Cao Cao was the final chancellor of the Eastern Han dynasty, who went on to form his own state during the political turmoil of the Three Kingdoms period. He died in 220 AD in Luoyang, the capital of the Eastern Han dynasty, and was posthumously named Emperor of the Wei state that he founded.2009 December 27, Beijing Newsroom, Lucy Hornby, “China says discovers tomb of famed general Cao Cao”, in Sugita Katyal, editor, Reuters, archived from the original on 12 Oct 2025
    Synonyms:
    Liang

Proper noun (2)

Wei

  1. (historical) An ancient Chinese duchy during the Zhou dynasty

Proper noun (3)

Wei

  1. A river in China, a tributary of the Yellow River.
    Synonyms:
    Wei River

Synonyms of Wei

Forms of Wei

alternative formNgwei
alternative formWey

Origin of Wei

From Mandarin Chinese 魏 (Wèi).

From Mandarin Chinese 衞 /卫 (Wèi).

Phrases with Wei

Words that rhyme with Wei

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about Wei

What does Wei mean?
Wei means a county of Handan, Hebei, China.
What part of speech is Wei?
Wei is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce Wei?
Wei is pronounced /weɪ/.

Words near Wei in the dictionary

  1. wehrwolf
  2. wehrwolves
  3. wehs
  4. Wehunt
  5. Wehunts
  6. Wei
  7. wei ch'i
  8. wei qi
  9. Wei River
  10. Wei Wai Kum
  11. Wei-fang

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Wei (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-Wei.wav.

Cite this entry: “Wei.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wei. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.