武 wǔ is built from 止 zhǐ (a foot, to stop) carrying 戈 gē (a dagger-axe, the classic ancient weapon). The most literal reading of the early graph is a foot striding beneath a weapon: the soldier on the march, arms in hand. The simplified and traditional forms are identical, eight strokes that have changed little across the script's long history.

But the character carries a famous second reading, recorded in the early commentaries and quoted ever after. Because 止 also means to stop, 武 was glossed as 止戈, "to halt the weapons": true martial power is the strength that ends conflict, not the appetite that prolongs it. The two readings, the foot that marches and the foot that halts, sit inside one glyph, and the tension between them runs straight through the Chinese idea of force. Strength is honoured, but the highest strength is the kind that no longer needs to be used.

From this core of armed strength under discipline three semantic lives unfold: 武 as the military and the apparatus of arms (武力, 武器, 武装); 武 as trained fighting skill, the martial arts of the body (武术, 武功, 武打); and 武 as a quality of bearing, valiant, fierce, imposing (威武, 英武, 武勇). Across all three the character stands as the partner and opposite of 文 wén, the civil, the literary, the cultured: 文 the brush and 武 the blade, the two halves of a complete person and a complete state.

The most concrete face of 武 is organised force: armies, weapons, and the state's capacity to compel. 武力 wǔlì is force in the abstract, the option of using arms; to settle a dispute 用武力 is to settle it by military means. 武器 wǔqì is the weapon itself, the tool that gives that force its edge. 武装 wǔzhuāng turns the idea into an action and a state: to arm, and to be armed, the soldier kitted out for war. Each compound narrows the same root, from the bare possibility of force to the hardware that delivers it to the body that carries it.

Turn 武 from the army to the individual and it becomes the art of the trained body. 武术 wǔshù is the whole tradition of Chinese fighting arts, from 太极拳 to 少林 boxing, practised as much for discipline and health as for combat. 武功 wǔgōng is the skill itself, the level of attainment a fighter has reached, the word that fills the pages of martial-hero novels. 武打 wǔdǎ is fighting as performance, the choreographed combat of opera and film. Around them grows a whole imaginative world: 武侠 wǔxiá, the genre of wandering swordsmen bound by their own code of honour.

The third face of 武 is not an institution or a skill but a quality of presence: the look and bearing of strength. 威武 wēiwǔ pairs 威 (awe-inspiring authority) with 武 to describe what is powerful and dignified, the imposing figure of a general or a guard, mighty in a way that commands respect. 英武 yīngwǔ adds 英 (heroic, outstanding) for the valiant, impressive look of a soldier or hero. Here 武 has left the battlefield and become an adjective of character: brave, martial, formidable in oneself, the visible mark of a person built for strength.

Hold 武 wǔ as a foot beneath a dagger-axe: the soldier striding to war, arms in hand. Then remember the old gloss that turned the same picture inside out, 止戈, the foot that halts the weapons. The whole character lives in that double image, the strength that marches and the strength that stops, force honoured but always pointed toward the peace it is meant to secure.

From that root the three senses follow. Force as institution gives you 武力 armed force, 武器 the weapon, 武装 to arm. Force as trained skill gives you 武术 the martial arts, 武功 a master's prowess, and the whole world of 武侠 wandering swordsmen. Force as bearing gives you 威武 powerful and dignified, 英武 valiant. And always 武 stands across from 文, the blade beside the brush: the complete person, says the idiom 文武双全, is master of both.