什shí

什

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简体

Simplified Chinese

Simplified and traditional are identical for 什 (shí), a semantic-phonetic compound pairing the person radical 亻 with 十 as the phonetic element. Originally written as a pictograph of a measuring device in oracle bone script, 十 simply represented the number ten before serving as a building block in dozens of characters including 仁 (benevolence), 仕 (official), and the ubiquitous 什么 (what).

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Shuowen

什. The oracle bone 什 is formed by adding the numeral 十 to the human radical 亻, literally depicting a group of ten persons. The original meaning was “ten”, a numeric concept, and by extension a group of ten, later used to mean “various” or “what” in colloquial speech. The composition of person plus ten was chosen to visually convey the idea of a collective of ten, reflecting the ancient practice of counting by tens.

Pinyin

shí· HSK 1

什shí

Character evolution

Shuowen

Pinyin