chì
only
Phonosemantic compound. 口 represents the meaning and 帝 represents the sound. Original meaning unclear.
Evolution

Bronze script
Mid Western Zhou (~900 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Western Han dynasty (202 BC-9 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
chì
only, merely; just like; stop at; only (classical, usually follows negative or question words); (not) just
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
4249th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 12 |
Unicode | U+557B |
Shuowen | “啻,語時,不啻也。从口,帝聲。一曰:啻,諟也。” |
Sources
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