遗物

• Pinyin: yí wù
• Hanzi breakdown: 遗 = 辶 + 贵 (movement + precious — left behind); 物 = 牛 + 勿 (cattle + not — originally a spotted ox, extended to mean things/objects in general)

Meaning

Belongings left behind by the deceased; relics; personal effects of someone who has died.

Refers specifically to personal objects left behind after someone's death, carrying emotional and memorial significance. Distinct from 遗产 (estate/inheritance — financial and legal) and 文物 (cultural relics/artefacts). Common in obituaries, memorial contexts, and literary works dealing with loss and memory.

Examples

1. 清理父亲遗物时，她在抽屉深处发现了一封从未寄出的信，字迹已经褪色，却仍能辨认出那是对她的思念与嘱托。 While sorting through her father’s belongings, she found a letter deep in a drawer that had never been sent; the handwriting had faded, but she could still make out his longing and final instructions to her.
2. 博物馆将这批战争年代的遗物妥善保存，定期对公众展出，以唤起社会对那段历史的集体记忆。 The museum has carefully preserved this collection of wartime artifacts and displays them to the public regularly to awaken society’s shared memory of that period.
3. 逝者遗留下的一把旧吉他和厚厚一摞手稿，成为家人寄托哀思、缅怀其创作岁月的最珍贵遗物。 The old guitar and the thick stack of manuscripts the deceased left behind became the family’s most treasured keepsakes, a way to carry their grief and remember his years of creation.

Usage Guide

Context: memorial, family, literary, museum

Tone: solemn

Do Say

• 考古队在现场出土数十件保存较好的遗物，包括陶器、铁制农具和刻字骨片，为研究公元前三世纪的社会生活提供了依据。(The archaeological team unearthed dozens of well-preserved relics at the site, including pottery, iron farm tools, and inscribed bone pieces, providing evidence for studying social life in the third century BCE.)
• 她将母亲生前最常佩戴的那枚玉镯作为最重要的遗物珍藏起来，每逢忌日便轻轻取出端详，在无声中完成一次跨越生死的对话。(She treasured as the most important relic the jade bracelet her mother had worn most frequently in her lifetime; on each anniversary of her passing she would gently take it out and gaze at it, completing in silence a conversation that bridged the divide between life and death.)

Don't Say

• 我把遗物借给朋友了 — 遗物 carries deep emotional and memorial weight as the belongings of the deceased; treating them as ordinary borrowable items is culturally inappropriate; use 物品 or 东西 for ordinary possessions

Origin & History

遗 (left behind by the deceased) + 物 (thing/object — 牛 cow/animal + 勿 prohibition, originally indicating a spotted animal, extended to mean things/objects)

Cultural Context

Era: Modern

Generation: All ages

Social background: Universal