子
Meanings
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- 1.noun suffix, as in 椅子[yǐ zi] "chair"
- 1.son
- 2.child
- 3.seed
- 4.egg
- 5.small thing
- 6.1st earthly branch: 11 p.m.–1 a.m., midnight, 11th solar month (7th December to 5th January), year of the rat
- 7.viscount, fourth of five orders of nobility 五等爵位[wǔ děng jué wèi]
- 8.ancient Chinese compass point: 0° (north)
- 9.subsidiary; subordinate; (prefix) sub-
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Wiktionary
- 1.child; offspring; descendant
- 2.son
- 3.the Son
- 4.person
- 5.master; teacher; if just one 子 is shown in Classical Chinese, it should mean Confucius.
- 6.A respectful title for teachers, usually attached after their surnames.
- 7.you
- 8.egg
- 9.young; tender; small
- 10.Prefix attached to nouns, denoting "a part of", "belonging to" or "individual"; sub-.
- 11.First earthly branch: rat in the Chinese zodiac, 11th solar month, midnight (11:00 pm to 1:00 am)
- 12.viscount (fourth of five ranks of Chinese aristocracy under the Zhou dynasty)
- 13.-on
- 14.a surname
- 15.grain-like object; particle; granule
- 16.rhythm
- 17.Classifier for small, round objects: granule, grain, particle, piece
- 18.Suffix:
- 19.Used to nominalize.
- 20.Used in some classifiers.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Etymology
Pictogram (象形) – an image of a baby, with a large head and spread arms. The legs are wrapped in a blanket. Compare with 了, where the arms are wrapped, and 㜽, in which a lock of hair is visible on top. Compare also 棄 and 毓, in which the image of the baby is reversed upside-down. The big seal script form is much more elaborate, showing a baby with hair on a head (囟) and arms on the two sides of the body, sitting on a stool (几). See also the right component of 保. ;child :Cognate with 字 (OC *zlɯs, “character; letter”), 慈 (OC *zɯ, “loving; kind”), 滋 (OC *ʔsɯ, “to grow, to breed, to propagate, to bring about, to increase”), 孳 (OC *ʔsɯ, *zɯs, “to breed, to propagate”). ;first earthly branch :Smith (2011) proposes the first earthly branch had been 甾. Observing that 甾 is closely linked with 緇 (“dark, stained”), 淄 (“murky (water)”), 菑 (zī, “field cleared by burning”) (all pronounced *tsrə), he proposes that initially the first earthly branch 甾 (OC *ts[r]əʔ) had meant "darkened, voided, the darkened stage" and had denoted the new moon phase (ibid.). Meanwhile, 子 (OC tsəʔ) had originated from a Sino-Tibetan root meaning "to come forth" and had denoted the moon's "coming forth" stage (i.e. early waning-gibbous phase) (ibid.). :Sometime in Warring States period, a change occurred that 子 became the first earthly branch and 巳 (OC *s-ləʔ) filled the void of the sixth earthly branch (Matsumaru, 2015), "due to phonological closeness (combined with the semantic opacity of the Branch terms at later eras)" (Smith, 2011). :Association with the rat was possibly arbitrary, analogous to how 辰, the fifth earthly branch, was arbitrarily associated with the dragon (Ferlus, 2013).
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Stroke order
Components
Components from cjk-decomp · MIT
Example sentences
輪子不轉。
The wheel doesn't turn.
抓住繩子。
Grab a hold of the rope.
抓住繩子。
Grab hold of the rope.
他賣車子。
He sells cars.
盤子很髒。
The plate is dirty.
獅子是動物。
Lions are animals.
Sentences from Tatoeba · CC-BY 2.0 FR
More examples & usage (AI)
Synonyms
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Derived terms
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA