吾

1. First-person pronoun: “I,” “me,” “my,” “our.” (Can be singular or plural).

2. Verb: “To resist,” “to impede,” or “to oppose.”

• Pronominal roles: Often functions as the nominative (subject) or possessive. When modifying a noun without the particle 之, it serves as a possessive (“my”).
• Plurality: Plurality is often marked by accompanying terms (e.g., 吾等).

• 吾 vs. 我: In early texts, these may exhibit a functional distribution where 吾 tends toward the nominative or possessive and 我 more frequently serves as the accusative (object). Alternation between the two within a passage may signal changes in social register or psychological stance.
• Comparison with 余: Both serve as first-person markers; their alternation often reflects regional dialect or a deliberate contrast in persona.

• Phonetics: Tang-period reading *ngo (nasal onset), relevant for identifying phonetic loans and verifying rhyme groups in poetry.

While pronominal use is dominant, the verbal sense (“resist,” “impede”) is critical if the glyph appears in a syntactic position requiring a verb where a first-person subject would be illogical.