住zhù

住

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简体

Simplified Chinese

Modern simplified form (簡體). 住 (zhù, "to stay, to live") combines the person radical 亻 with 主, the ancient pictograph of an oil lamp whose flame marked the center of a household—thus "the one who presides" came to mean the one who dwells. It appears in 居住 (to reside), 住房 (housing), 记住 (to remember) and 抓住 (to seize).

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Shuowen

住. The character combines the human radical 亻 with the phonetic 主, which originally represented a torch or a lamp, signifying a place where a person stays. In oracle bone inscriptions the figure shows a person standing inside a dwelling, indicating the act of residing. The later script fixed this as 亻 + 主 to convey “to dwell, to stay”.

Pinyin

zhù· HSK 1

住zhù

Character evolution

Shuowen

Pinyin