Example sentences
xià下wǔ午jiàn见。
See you this afternoon.
xià下wǔ午wǒ我qù去。
I'll go in the afternoon.
About this word
下 means "below, under" and 午 means "noon". 下午 is the part of the day below noon, meaning after it. The set is easy to hold together: 上午 (before noon), 中午 (exactly noon), 下午 (after noon). 午 also appears in 午饭 (lunch) and 午夜 (midnight). As a time word, 下午 goes before the verb or at the head of the sentence (我下午去商店, 下午我在家). It runs from noon until evening, when 晚上 takes over.
The story behind the character
下
The mirror image of 上. A line with a short mark below it. Xu Shen wrote 下, 底也: "down, the bottom." Another indicated direction, plain as can be.
午
午 is a pestle: thick at both ends, thin in the middle, the stick for pounding grain. That is how most scholars read it. Xu Shen glossed it differently, 午, 啎也, to go against, which follows the sound more than the picture. 午 got borrowed for the seventh earthly branch, the one covering eleven to one, so midday is 午. The pestle had to be reissued as 杵.