Because of how it sounds. The Chinese word for four and the word for death differ only in tone in many varieties of Chinese, and the same collision occurs in Sino-Japanese shi and Sino-Korean sa. It is a homophone rather than a belief about the number.

Why does Vietnam not have it?

Because the words do not collide there. The Sino-Vietnamese terms carry different tones that distinguish four from death, and the native Vietnamese words for both are used far more in everyday speech. The superstition appears exactly where the phonetics produce it and stops where they do not.

Do buildings really skip floors?

Some Hong Kong buildings skip the entire forties, so the fiftieth floor sits directly above the thirty-ninth. The material adds that tetraphobia is not the main reason: higher floors sell for more, so removing ten numbers raises everything above them, and the superstition supplies the justification.

Does the Chinese state avoid the number?

No, and the contrast is instructive. The People's Liberation Army uses four freely in designations including the Dongfeng-4 missile, the Type 094 submarine and the Type 054A frigate, and government policy formulations use it routinely. The navies of Taiwan and South Korea avoid it in pennant numbers, which makes the difference a matter of official decision rather than of language.

Which combinations are worst?

The compounds, and they differ by language. In Mandarin, fourteen sounds like is dead and seventy-four like actually dead or angered to death, and ninety-four can be read as certain death. For Cantonese speakers fourteen sounds like will certainly die and twenty-four like easy to die.

How far does the avoidance go?

To aircraft registrations. China Southern Airlines' A330 fleet runs B-8363, B-8365, B-8366, then B-1062, B-1063 and B-1065, skipping the registrations ending in four. The boundary shows what is being avoided: B-8426 is in service, because only the final digit is read.

Fear of the Number 4 (Tetraphobia): Meaning & Symptoms

Fear of the Number 4

Tetraphobia

The Chinese word for four, si, and the word for death, si, differ only in tone in many varieties of Chinese. The Sino-Japanese shi, the Sino-Korean sa and the Sino-Vietnamese tu are similarly close to the word for death in each language.

Vietnamese is the case that proves what is going on. There the Sino-Vietnamese words carry different tones that distinguish the two, and the native Vietnamese words for four and death are used far more in everyday speech. Vietnam does not have tetraphobia. The superstition follows the phonetics exactly, appearing where the words collide and stopping where they do not.

Which compounds count as worse

In Mandarin-speaking regions, fourteen and seventy-four are considered unluckier than four alone. Fourteen, shi si, sounds like shi si meaning is dead. In some forms of the language one is pronounced yao, which sounds like yao meaning to want, so the combination sounds like want death. Seventy-four, qi shi si, sounds like qi shi si, actually dead, or qi si, angered to death.

For Cantonese speakers the unlucky compounds are different again:

fourteen sounds like will certainly die
twenty-four sounds like easy to die

Chinese permits an unusually large number of homophones, having a tonal system and a comparatively small inventory of permitted syllables, so many numbers have acquired superstitious meanings this way. The avoidance extends to phone numbers and addresses, and ninety-four can be read as certain death.

Where the buildings lose floors

Some Hong Kong apartment buildings, Vista Paradiso and The Arch among them, skip the entire forties: the floor above the thirty-ninth is the fiftieth. Anyone unaware of the superstition assumes floors are missing, which in a sense they are.

The material makes a sharp observation about why. Tetraphobia is not the main reason. Higher floors in Hong Kong apartments generally sell for more, so removing ten numbers raises the nominal floor of everything above them, and the superstition provides the excuse. The reference given for the practice is a building whose address is 39 Conduit Road.

Where East Asian and Western superstitions are both accommodated, the thirteenth and fourteenth floors may both be skipped along with every other four. A building whose top floor is numbered one hundred could have eighty storeys.

Which institutions ignore the superstition

Tetraphobia is not apparent in the military and government institutions of the People's Republic of China. The Chinese Communist Party and the People's Liberation Army use four freely in equipment designations: the Dongfeng-4 intercontinental ballistic missile, the Type 094 submarine, the Type 054A frigate. Government policies routinely use the number in their formulations.

By contrast, the navies of Taiwan and of South Korea avoid four when assigning pennant numbers to ships.

That is a genuinely useful comparison. Two states using the same language and the same homophone reach opposite institutional policies, which means the superstition's force is a matter of official decision rather than of the language alone.

How the registrations skip it

China has avoided four in aircraft registrations in recent years, and the sequence is visible in China Southern Airlines' A330 fleet: B-8363, then B-8365, then B-8366, then B-1062, B-1063 and B-1065. The skipped registrations are B-8364 and B-1064.

The policy has a boundary worth noting, because it shows what is actually being avoided. It applies only to registrations ending in four. B-8426 is in service; B-8264 would not be. The final digit is the one that is read.

What it is bigger than

Tetraphobia far surpasses triskaidekaphobia, the Western superstition around thirteen, and it permeates the business world across these regions. In Japan the number is avoided in some apartments and hospitals.

A superstition that removes floors from buildings, digits from aircraft, and numbers from ships is doing more practical work than most of the fears in this catalogue, and it rests entirely on two words sounding alike.

Common questions

Questions about Tetraphobia

Why is four unlucky?: Because of how it sounds. The Chinese word for four and the word for death differ only in tone in many varieties of Chinese, and the same collision occurs in Sino-Japanese shi and Sino-Korean sa. It is a homophone rather than a belief about the number.
Why does Vietnam not have it?: Because the words do not collide there. The Sino-Vietnamese terms carry different tones that distinguish four from death, and the native Vietnamese words for both are used far more in everyday speech. The superstition appears exactly where the phonetics produce it and stops where they do not.
Do buildings really skip floors?: Some Hong Kong buildings skip the entire forties, so the fiftieth floor sits directly above the thirty-ninth. The material adds that tetraphobia is not the main reason: higher floors sell for more, so removing ten numbers raises everything above them, and the superstition supplies the justification.
Does the Chinese state avoid the number?: No, and the contrast is instructive. The People's Liberation Army uses four freely in designations including the Dongfeng-4 missile, the Type 094 submarine and the Type 054A frigate, and government policy formulations use it routinely. The navies of Taiwan and South Korea avoid it in pennant numbers, which makes the difference a matter of official decision rather than of language.
Which combinations are worst?: The compounds, and they differ by language. In Mandarin, fourteen sounds like is dead and seventy-four like actually dead or angered to death, and ninety-four can be read as certain death. For Cantonese speakers fourteen sounds like will certainly die and twenty-four like easy to die.
How far does the avoidance go?: To aircraft registrations. China Southern Airlines' A330 fleet runs B-8363, B-8365, B-8366, then B-1062, B-1063 and B-1065, skipping the registrations ending in four. The boundary shows what is being avoided: B-8426 is in service, because only the final digit is read.

Added 2026-08-23 · Revised 2026-08-26