chī, lí
leave
Original meaning:
catch a bird
Simplified form of 離. Depicts a bird (隹) being caught in a bird trap (罕). Based on the original meaning "catch a bird". The meaning later shifted to "reject", "separate", and "leave". The 隹 (bird) component was removed for simplification.
Evolution

Bronze script
Late Warring States (~250 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Western Han dynasty (202 BC-9 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*r̥aj | trhje | chī | mountain demon |
Statistics
HSK level 2
Appears in 94.6020% of movies
227th most common character in movies
418th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 10 |
Traditional | |
Unicode | U+79BB |
Shuowen | “离,山神獸也。从禽頭,从厹,从屮。歐陽喬說:‘离,猛獸也。’” |
Sources
季旭昇《說文新證》p.954
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