Chinese Character Wiki
照

zhào

shine

Phonosemantic compound. 灬 represents the meaning and 昭 represents the sound.

Components
灬 meaning component

灬  Meaning component

biāo, huǒ

  

fire

灬 is a component form of 火.

昭 sound,meaning component

昭  Sound Meaning component

zhāo

  

bright

Evolution

照 Bronze script Mid Western Zhou (~900 BC)

Bronze script

Mid Western Zhou (~900 BC)
照 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
照 Clerical script Cao Wei (Three Kingdoms: 222-280 AD)

Clerical script

Cao Wei (Three Kingdoms: 222-280 AD)
照 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

照  

zhào

shine, illumine, reflect; according to; in accordance with; to shine; to illuminate; to reflect; to look at (one's reflection); to take (a photo); photo; as requested; as before

照 (炤) 

zhào

variant of 照[zhào]

Most common words with 照
Freq.
Word
Meaning

照片

photograph

按照

according to

照

according to

照顾

to take care of

对照

to contrast

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*taw-s

tsyewH

zhào

shine on


Statistics

HSK level 3

Appears in 82.7487% of movies

310th most common character in movies

443rd most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

13

Unicode

U+7167

Shuowen

“照，明也。从火，昭聲。”


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