Word.ws English Dictionary

wu wei

/ˈwuː ˌweɪ/

wu wei noun: a state of effortless inaction, in Taoism or Chinese statecraft.

Noun

wu wei (uncountable)

  1. A state of effortless inaction, in Taoism or Chinese statecraft.
    • These alternatives seem tepid, or even reactionary – take Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi’s invocation of a politics of exhaustion that would ‘become the beginning of a slow movement toward a “wu wei” civilization, based on withdrawal, and frugal expectations for life and consumption’.2013, Benjamin Noys, quoting Franco Berardi, Malign Velocities: Accelerationism and Capitalism, Zero Books, →ISBN

Forms of wu wei

alternative formwu-wei

Origin of wu wei

Borrowed from Chinese 無為 /无为 (wúwéi).

Questions about wu wei

What does wu wei mean?
Wu wei means a state of effortless inaction, in Taoism or Chinese statecraft.
What part of speech is wu wei?
Wu wei is a noun.
How do you pronounce wu wei?
Wu wei is pronounced /ˈwuː ˌweɪ/.

Words near wu wei in the dictionary

  1. wu
  2. Wu Flu
  3. wu gok
  4. Wu Han
  5. wu kok
  6. wu wei
  7. Wu'an
  8. Wu-ch'ang
  9. Wu-ch'ia
  10. Wu-ch'ing
  11. Wu-ch'uan

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wu 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.

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