纸zhǐ
Character evolution
纸
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简体
Simplified Chinese
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Shuowen
纸. The left side is the silk radical 纟, indicating the material of silk; the right side 氐 is a phonetic component. In oracle bone script the character depicted a sheet of silk being pressed, giving the original meaning “paper”. The shape was chosen because the semantic field concerns the material of silk, and the phonetic component supplies the sound.
Pinyin
zhǐ· HSK 1