Chinese Character Wiki
失

shī

lose

Original meaning: 

to hide from view

Depicts a person (元) hiding in plants (屮). Based on the original meaning "to hide from view", now written as 佚. The meaning later shifted to "fail" and "lose".

Components
屮 iconic component

屮  Iconic component

chè

  

sprout

Depicts a plant.

元 iconic component

元  Iconic component

yuán

  

first

Depicts a person hiding. Modern form looks like 大.

Evolution

失 Bronze script Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)

Bronze script

Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)
失 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
失 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
失 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

失  

shī

lose; make mistake, neglect; to lose; to miss; to fail

Most common words with 失
Freq.
Word
Meaning

失去

to lose

消失

to disappear

失败

to lose

失望

disappointed

损失

loss

Component uses

Meaning component in 2 characters (1 verified)

跌 佚

Sound component in 11 characters (2 verified)

铁 跌 秩 迭 軼 轶 帙 鉄 瓞 袟 泆

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*l̥i[t]

syit

shī

lose


Statistics

HSK level 3

Appears in 92.2794% of movies

279th most common character in movies

375th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

5

Unicode

U+5931

Shuowen

“失，縱也。从手，乙聲。”
Sources

何琳儀《戰國古文字典：戰國文字聲系》p.1090

黃德寬《古文字譜系疏證》p.3349



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