Chinese Character Wiki
什

shén, shí

what

Original meaning: 

file of ten soldiers

The character is based on the original meaning "file of ten soldiers". The modern meaning "what" is a phonetic loan.

Components
亻 meaning component

亻  Meaning component

rén

  

person

亻 is a component form of 人.

十 meaning component

十  Meaning component

shí

  

ten

Evolution

什 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
什 Clerical script Qin dynasty (221-206 BC)

Clerical script

Qin dynasty (221-206 BC)
什 Clerical script Western Han dynasty (202 BC-9 AD)

Clerical script

Western Han dynasty (202 BC-9 AD)
什 Clerical script Western Han dynasty (202 BC-9 AD)

Clerical script

Western Han dynasty (202 BC-9 AD)
什 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

什  

shén

file of ten soldiers; mixed, miscellaneous; what

什  

shí

ten (used in fractions, writing checks etc); assorted; miscellaneous

Most common words with 什
Freq.
Word
Meaning

什么

what?

为什么

why?

没什么

nothing

什么样

what kind?

什

what

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*t.[g]əp

dzyip

shí

troop of ten men


Statistics

HSK level 1

Appears in 99.9359% of movies

22nd most common character in movies

156th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

4

Unicode

U+4EC0

Shuowen

“什，相什保也。从人、十。”


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