Chinese Character Wiki

賊

zéi

thief

Phonosemantic compound. 戎 represents the meaning and 貝 represents the sound.

Components
戎 meaning component

戎  Meaning component

róng

  

arms

貝 sound component

貝  Sound component

bèi

  

sea shell

Evolution

賊 Bronze script Late Western Zhou (~800 BC)

Bronze script

Late Western Zhou (~800 BC)
賊 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
賊 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
賊 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

贼 (賊) 

zéi

thief, traitor; thief; traitor; wily; deceitful; evil; extremely

Most common words with 賊
Freq.
Word
Meaning

贼

thief

盗贼

robber

海贼

pirate

窃贼

thief

乌贼

cuttlefish

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*k.dzˤək

dzok

zéi

injure; murderer, bandit


Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 9.0021% of movies

1903rd most common character in movies

2001st most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

13

Simplified

贼

Unicode

U+8CCA

Shuowen

“，敗也。从戈，則聲。”


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