zé
rule
Original meaning:
law
Depicts carving inscriptions on bronzeware (鼎) with a knife (刂). Based on the original meaning "law". In ancient China, some legal writings were inscribed on bronzeware.
Components
Evolution

Bronze script
Mid Western Zhou (~900 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Qin dynasty (221-206 BC)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*[ts]ˤək | tsok | zé | then |
*[ts]ˤək | tsok | zé | rule, pattern |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 59.8270% of movies
723rd most common character in movies
284th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 9 |
Simplified | |
Unicode | U+5247 |
Shuowen | “則,等畫物也。从刀,从貝。貝,古之物貨也。,古文則。,亦古文則。,籀文則从鼎。” |
Sources
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