字 - Dong Chinese dictionary

zì

letter

Original meaning:

raise up children

Phonosemantic compound. 宀 represents the meaning and 子 represents the sound. The 宀 (roof) component is based on the original meaning "raise up children". The meaning later shifted to "educate", "word", and "writing".

Components

宀 Meaning component

mián

roof

宀 hints at the original meaning of 字, "raise up children", which is no longer the most common meaning of 字 in modern Mandarin.

子 Sound Meaning component

zi, zǐ

child

子 hints at the original meaning of 字, "raise up children", which is no longer the most common meaning of 字 in modern Mandarin.

Evolution

Bronze script

Late Shang dynasty (~1100 BC)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Regular script

Modern

Definitions

字

zì

letter, character, word; letter; symbol; character; word; CL:個|个[gè]; courtesy or style name traditionally given to males aged 20 in dynastic China

Most common words with 字

Freq.	Word	Meaning
	名字	name (of a person or thing)
	字	letter
	数字	numeral
	文字	character
	签字	signature

Component uses

Sound component in 1 character (0 verified)

牸

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese	Middle Chinese	Pinyin	Gloss
*mə-dzə(ʔ)-s	dziH	zì	breed, love (v.); character

Statistics

HSK level 1

Appears in 85.6159% of movies

323rd most common character in movies

393rd most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes	6
Unicode	U+5B57
Shuowen	“字，乳也。从子在宀下，子亦聲。”

Sources

MTSU Chinese text computing

漢語多功能字庫

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Original meaning:

Freq.

Word

Meaning